LINCOLN  ROOM 

UNIVERSITY  OF  ILLINOIS 
LIBRARY 


MEMORIAL 

the  Class  of  1901 

founded  by 

HARLAN  HOYT  HORNER 

and 

HENRIETTA  CALHOUN  HORNER 


ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  IN  1858. 


ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 


A  N  1) 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME 


BY 

ROBERT  H.  BROWNE,  M.  D. 


IN   TWO   VOLUMES 
VOLUME  I 


CINCINNATI :   JENNINGS  &  PYE 
NEW  YORK:    EATON  &  MAINS 


Copyright,  1901,  bt  the 
Wbstekn  Methodist  Book  Conobkn 


a-  "^ 


CONTENTS  OF  VOLUME  I. 


CHAPTER  I. 

Page. 
Abraham  Lincoln— Son  of  a  Hardy  Western  Pioneer— Thomas 
Lincoln— Characteristics  of  the  Father— How  Great  Men  are 
developed— Some  Examples:  Philip  of  Macedon,  Caesar,  Savon- 
arola, Martin  Luther— The  Birth  of  Freedom  in  England: 
Magna  Charta,  Robert  Bruce,  Hampden  and  Cromwell,  Will- 
iam of  Orange— The  Founding  of  our  Nation— What  Luther 
had  accomplished— What  Cromwell  had  accomplished— What 
the  Development  of  our  Country  has  Meant  to  the  World— Our 
Relation  to  Great  Britain  and  Other  Countries— What  our 
Future  may  be— The  Time  of  the  Revolution— The  Condition 
of  the  Colonies— The  Leader,  Washington:  His  Training  and 
Fitness— Our  Second  Great  Leader,  Abraham  Lincoln— Com- 
parison with  Others— What  he  accomplished 11 

CHAPTER  IL 

"Little  Abe"— Slavery— God's  Chosen  Leader— Characteristics- 
Friend  of  the  Common  People— His  True  Relation  to  the 
Human  Race — How  he  became  a  Leader— The  Early  Settlers 
of  our  Country— The  Lincoln  Ancestry— Settlement  of  Ken- 
tucky—Boone  and  his  Associates— Death  of  Abraham,  the 
Pioneer— The   Lidian   Question 36 

CHAPTER  III. 

Thomas  Lincoln  and  his  Early  Surroundings  in  Kentucky— His 
Trade— Implements— Condition  of  the  Family— Character- 
Marriage— Removal  to  Nolin's  Creek  Farm— Birth  of  Abraham 
Lincoln— Description  of  Nancy  Hanks— Lincoln,  of  the  Com- 
mon People,  not  ashamed  of  his  Lineage— "God's  Grinding 
Out"  of  the  Slavery  Question— Our  Visit  to  his  Birthplace  in 
1862— Description  by  an  Old  Man— Testimony  of  Affection  to 
"Abe"— Elizabethtown— Nolin's      Creek      Farm— His      Sincere 

Friends— Austin   Gallagher 57 

3 


4  COXTEXTS. 

CHAPTER  IT. 

Pago. 

The  Task  Before  Lincoln— Story  of  a  Woman  near  Elizabethtown 
—Two  Removals  Westward— The  Blight  of  Slavery— The  Ham- 
mering Out  of  Character— The  Great  Westward  Movement- 
How  Homes  were  made — The  Pigeon  Creek  Settlement— The 
Destruction  of  Forests— Customs— Manner  of  Living,  and 
Habits SI 

CHAPTER  T. 

Death  in  Pigeon  Creek  Settlement— Abe  loses  his  Mother— Abe's 
Journey  of  Sixty  Miles  for  a  Minister— The  Dreary  Winter— 
The  Student— His  Early  Books — Marriage  of  Thomas  Lincoln 
and  Sarah  Bush  Johnston— Happier  Days,  with  Home  Comfort 
and  Care — Running  a  Ferry-boat — More  Study — The  First  Trip 
Down  the  Mississippi — The  Slave-market  of  New  Orleans — 
Journey  to  Illinois — "Neutral  Ground" — "The  Cold  Winter" — 
Rail-splitting 103 

CHAPTER  VI. 

Springfield — The  Freeze  of  December  20,  1S36 — Weedman's  Deer 
Park — "Internal  Improvements" — Navigation  of  the  Sangamon 
— Proposed  Trip  to  New  Orleans — Passing  the  Dam  near  New 
Salem — The  New  Orleans  Slave-market  again — Th:>mas  Lin- 
coln's Death — New  Salem  selected  a.s  a  Home — The  Black 
Hawk  War — Abe's  Election  as  Captain — Experience  in  the 
Field — Stillman's  Run — Black  Hawk — Mr.  Lincoln's  Descrip- 
tion of  his  Military  Experience — Clerking  for  Mr.  Off ut 130 

CHAPTER  YII. 

Forming  of  Character — '"Honest  Abe" — Trials  of  Strength — Navi- 
gation of  the  Sangamon — Newton  Graham — Kirkham's  Gram- 
mar— Candidate  for  the  Legislature — New  Acquaintances  and 
Future  Friends— Political  Beliefs— Defeat— "A  Country  Store" 
in  New  Salem:  A  Losing  Venture — Law-reading  in  the  Office 
of  Logan  and  Stuart— The  Bible.  Blackstone,  Coke,  Chitty. 
Greenleaf,  Story.  Kent,  and  Others  for  Three  Years'  Drill, 
until,  "Tou  know  as  much  about  it  as  we  do" — A  Favorite  Ad- 
vocate all  over  Central  Illinois,  alongside  Douglas  and  Others . .  155 


CONTENTS.  5 

CHAPTER  VIII. 

Page. 

Studying  Surveying— Work  under  Calhoun— Positmaster  of  New 
Salem— Removal  to  Springfield  in  1836— Canvass  for  the  Legis- 
lature—Elected— His  Work  at  Vandalia— Re-elected— Declara- 
tion for  Female  Suffrage  in  Third  Canvass— The  Canal  Enter- 
prise—Capital Removal  to  Springfield— Some  of  his  Associates 
—The  Slaverj'  Question— Signed  Protest  against  Pro-slavery 
Resolutions ITG 

CHAPTER  IX. 

The  Original  Policy  of  our  Government  toward  Slavery — Its 
Growth — Henry  Clay — Compromise  of  1820 — Compromisers — 
Slavery  Leaders,  Calhoun  and  Jefferson  Davis— Illinois  Consti- 
tutional Convention  Fight— Prevalent  Opinion  that  Slavery 
Agitation  was  Wrong — Lovejoy — Invasion  of  Texas — Lincoln's 
Wrestling  Match— Great  Physical  Strength 202 

CHAPTER  X. 

Beginning  of  Acquaintance  of  Lincoln  and  Douglas— Douglas:  An- 
cestry, Education,  Development:  An  Intellectual  Giant— Arrival 
at  Jacksonville,  111.,  in  1833,  at  Twenty  Years  of  Age— Book- 
keeping, Teaching,  Law-reading,  Elected  to  Legislature  at 
Twenty-two— Nimmo  Browne:  Ancestry,  Training,  Education- 
Acquaintance  with  Douglas— Political  Beliefs— Friendly  Dis- 
putes—Building the  Springfield  Capitol— Meeting  Lincoln- 
Comparison  of  Douglas  and  Lincoln— The  Career  of  Douglas..  .218 

CHAPTER  XI. 

Discussion  between  Douglas  and  Browne— On  Slavery  Extension- 
Policy  of  the  Nation  toward  Slavery— Democratic  Policy— 
A  Warning  against  Abolition  Senltiments  publicly  expressed— 
Browne's  Description  of  Lincoln— Douglas's  Estimate  of  Lin- 
coln—Lincoln's Law  Partnership  with  Stuart— The  Embar- 
rassments of  Politics— The  Campaign  of  1840— Increase  of 
Acquaintance  and  a  Wider  Sphere  of  Influence — The  Panic  of 
1837-38— Lincoln's  Financial  Beliefs— Hard'  Times,  and  How 
the  People  passed  through  them— Practicing  Law— Saving 
a  "Homestead." 231) 


6  CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER  XII. 

Page. 

The  Comparative  Standing  of  Some  Political  Leaders:  Lincoln, 
Douglas,  Clay,  Jackson,  Webster,  Van  Buren,  Harrison,  Cass, 
Scott,  Buchanan,  Jefferson  Davis — Lincoln's  Growing  Popular- 
ity— An  Affair  of  Honoi— General  Shields — The  Logan-Lincoln 
Partnership — Some  Famous  Students  or  Partners  with  Logan — 
Some  of  the  Able  and  Famous  Men  of  the  Springfield  Bar — 
Lincoln's  Marriage — The  Campaign  of  1844 — Some  Good  Tem- 
perance Work— Clay's  Third  and  Final  Defeat  for  President- 
Lincoln's  Inspiration  and  Prophecy — The  Admission  of  Texas.  .264 

CHAPTER  XIII. 

The  Mexican  War — General  Taylor — Victories  and  Defeats — As- 
tonishing Continental  Development — Our  New  Territory  and  its 
Disposal— The  Pro-slavery  Plan— Change  of  the  "Front  of  Bat- 
tle" to  Kansas-Nebraska — Lincoln's  Election  to  Congress — 
Cartwright — Douglas  as  Congressman-at-Large  and  Senator— 
A  Lifetime  Friendship— "Spot"  Resolutions 288 

CHAPTER  XIV. 

Campaign  of  1848— Mr.  Lincoln's  Canvass  in  the  East— The  Wil- 
mot  Proviso— Mr.  Lincoln's  Plan  of  Gradual  Emancipation — 
Rejection — John  A.  Logan  and  the  Peace  Convention  at  Rich- 
mond in  1861 — Mr.  Lincoln's  Enlightenment  on  the  Intentions 
of  the  Slave  Power — Clay,  Thurlow  Weed,  Horace  Greeley, 
William  H.  Seward,  Senator  Clayton,  General  Scott,  Calhoun, 
Jefferson  Davis,  General  Lewis  Cass,  Toombs,  Stephens,  Ber- 
rien, Crawford,  Foote  of  Mississippi,  Benton,  John  Wentworth, 
General  Shields,  Judge  Douglas,  and  Other  Distinguished  Ac- 
quaintances and  Associates  of  Lincoln — Success  in  Business — 
Partnership  with  Herndon — More  Study — Asahel  Gridley — 
Judge  Davis 311 

CHAPTER  XV. 

Friendly  Relation  of  Judge  Davis  and  Mr.  Lincoln— Some  Rem- 
iniscences— The  Crumbaugh  Brothers — An  Estimate  of  Lincoln 
— Campaign  of  1848 — Davis's  Protest  against  Lincoln's  Small 
Fees — Davis's  Tribute  to  Mr.  Lincoln — Judge  Drummond's  Es- 
timate— Some  False  Estimates— The  Real  Man  as  compared 
with  his  Associates— Reprimand  to  a  Law  Student 337 


CONTENTS.  7 

CHAPTER  XVI. 

Pago. 

Nimmo  Browne  and  Judge  Douglas  on  the  Mexican  War  and  its 

Relation  to   Slavery— Douglas's   Leadership— The   Slave-trade: 

Its  Introduction,  Growth 3G3 

CHAPTER  XVII. 

Race  Mixing— Pennsylvania  Abolition  Society— New  York  Manu- 
mission Society— Admission  of  Missouri-rBenjamin  Lundy's 
"Genius  of  Universal  Emancipation"— Lloyd  Garrison's  "Lib- 
erator"- American  Anti-slavery  Society— Liberty  Party— Barn- 
burners—Republican  Party— Lecompton  Constitution— Rebel- 
lion-Emancipation Proclamation— Thirteenth  Amendment 386 

CHAPTER  XVIII. 

Effect  of  Slavery  on  Labor,  Learning,  Religion,  Society— Policy  of 
Concession — Mr.  Ivincoln's  Conviction  when  elected  as  to  his 
Leadership  in  putting  Slavery  down — A  Never-to-be-Forgotten 
Interview— Whitney's  Invention— Thirty  Years  of  Clay's  and 
Calhoun's  Management  of  Affairs — Compromises  that  did  not 
settle — Some  of  the  Compromisers 406 

CHAPTER  XIX. 

Gold  Discovery  in  California— Rushing  Immigration— Slavery  Ex- 
tension defeated — Anxiety  of  the  Propaganda — Thirty-first 
Congress:  Some  of  its  Members — Mr.  Seward— "States'  Rights" 
Resolutions— Agitation  of  1848-50 — Compromise  of  1850— Furi- 
ous   Discussions 420 

CHAPTER  XX. 

"Sandy  Desert  Plain"— Prevailing  Belief  that  the  Slavery  Ques- 
tion was  settled  in  1850 — Archibald  Dixon — Death  of  Clay — 
"Peace-keeper  of  the  Nation" — Apathy  and  Indifference — Sup- 
pression of  Free  Speech — Political  Cowardice — Campaign  of 
1852 — Franklin  Pierce — Some  Other  Candidates — Election  of 
Pierce — The  Real  Agitators — Plan  to  repeal  the  Missouri  Cora- 
promise — Jefferson  Davis— Caleb  Cushing— The  Propaganda  in 
Full    Control 451 


g  CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER  XXI. 

Page. 

The  Westward  Movement— The  Building  of  a  New  Party— Some 
of  the  Forming  Elements — Estimate  of  Slave  Holdings  and 
Power — Repeal  of  the  Missouri  Compromise — Opinion  of  Joshua 
Giddings— The  Kansas-Nebraska  Bill— Denunciation  of  Doug- 
las— What  forced  the  Repeal — Archibald  Dixon — Atchison's 
Negotiation  with  Douglas — Atchison  as  a  Border  Leader- 
Douglas's    Real    Position 474 

CHAPTER  XXII. 

Douglas's  Decision— "Squatter  Sovereignty"— The  Storm  of  Angry 
Denunciations — John  Steven — An  Estimate  of  Lincoln — Begin- 
ning of  the  Writer's  Acquaintance  with  Davis,  Gridley,  and 
Lincoln — Introduction  to  Lincoln  as  an  Abolitionist — A 
Friendly  Discussion,  in  which  Mr.  Gridley  assists — Early  Im- 
pressions of  Slavery — Mr.  Lincoln's  OlHce  Habits  and  Pleasant 
Ways — The  Darkest  Days  of  our  Republic 495 

CHAPTER  XXIII. 

The  Elements  of  which  the  New  Party  was  made — Douglas's  Deli- 
cate, Exasperating  Position — Anti-Nebraska  Campaign  of  1854 
— Joint  Debates — Peoria  Argument — Election  of  Trumbull  to 
United  States  Senate — Boy  "Abolitionists"  in  Bloomington — 
Restraints  on  Mr.  Lincoln — Work  of  Organizing  the  Republican 
Party   in  1854 515 

CHAPTER  XXIV. 

The  Louisiana  Purchase — Compromise  of  1820 — Compromise  of 
1850— Kansas-Nebraska  Bill  of  1854— Emigi-ant  Aid  Societies 
—Where  ithe  Kansas  Emigrants  were  from — Slave  Emigration 
from  Missouri — The  Atchison  Plan — Congressional  Investiga- 
tion of  1856 — Kansas  Governors — Jefferson  Davis  in  Control — 
Woodson  as  Acting  Governor — The  Courts — "The  Squatter 
Sovereign" — "Candle  Boxes" — Armed  Missourians — Governor 
Reeder — Census  of  1855 — Election  following — Second  Invasion 
ot  Atchison — Certificates  of  Election  under  Dui-ess — Reeder's 
Humiliation  at  Washington— Subsequent  Removal  from  Office 
— Work  of  the  "Bogus  T^egislature" — Judge  Lecompte — Gov- 
ernor Shannon 539 


CONTENTS.  9 

CHAPTER  XXV, 

Page. 
Mass  Convention  at  Big  Springs— Election  of  October  9,  1855— 
Free  State  Constitution- Election  of  1S56 — Changing  Attitude 
of  Politicians — Committee  of  Investigation,  known  as  the 
Howard  Committee — The  llight  of  Self-government — Sheriff 
Jones — Arrests  and  Indictments — Lane's  Emigrants  with 
Sharp's  Rifles— "Jim  Lane"— John  Brown— The  Real  Situa- 
tion—The Nation  appalled — Aroused  from  its  Negligence 561 


■/> 


Abraham  Lincoln 

AND 

THE   MEN   OF  HIS  TIME 


CHAPTER  I. 

ABEAHAM  LINCOLN  was  the  son  of  a  hardy  Western 
pioneer.  He  was  born  and  grew  into  strong,  rugged 
manhood  at  a  time  when  the  vast,  fertile,  and  im- 
mensely-productive basin  of  the  middle  and  upper  Missis- 
sippi was  being  settled  and  brought  under  the  uses  of  a 
mighty  westward  migration.  The  vast  areas  of  forest, 
mountain,  and  plain,  and  the  widespreading  waterways  of 
the  middle  continent  were  well  adapted  to  the  purposes  of 
the  moving  multitudes;  and  they  could  be  numbered  each 
year  by  hundreds  of  thousands.  In  one  short  generation 
they  transformed  the  wilderness  and  the  sea-like  plains 
into  one  of  the  most  beautiful  and  happiest  habited  regions 
of  the  earth — strong  in  every  element  that  has  made  and 
built  up  our  unequaled  Western  civilization. 

Abraham  Lincoln  grew  and  waxed  strong  alongside  the 
best  and  bravest,  the  most  industrious  and  hard-working 
men  and  boys  of  his  time,  whose  principles  were  love  of 
kindred,  home,  and  country,  that  the  story  of  the  Savior 
was  the  faith  of  the  pioneer,  and  that  '"the  fear  of  the 

11 


12  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

Lord  was  the  beginning  of  wisdom."  They  were  men  whose 
patient,  contimions  toil  and  hardships  made  them  the 
strongest-bodied,  most  supple,  and  active-limbed  body  of 
men  in  all  the  land,  whose  intelligence  and  ancestry  made 
them  worthy  successors  of  men  who  fought  and  died  for 
their  liberties. 

The  father,  Thomas  Lincoln,  as  it  will  develop  in  our 
progress,  was  one  of  the  rugged,  able-bodied  men  who  were 
the  early  settlers  of  Kentucky,  son  of  Abraham  Lincoln,  the 
companion  of  Daniel  Boone.  The  elder  was  massacred  by  the 
Indians,  when  Thomas  escaped  the  fate  of  his  father.  Dis- 
tancing his  pursuers,  he  summoned  the  neighbors  to  the 
defense  of  the  cabin  home  of  the  family.  He  had  cour- 
age, patience,  and  industry — those  sterling  qualities  of  man- 
hood— to  form  the  foundation  for  the  character  and  career 
of  his  remarkable  son.  He  quietly  toiled  on  in  his  duty, 
living  the  life  on  the  frontier  that  became  a  necessity  to 
reduce  a  continental  wilderness  to  civilization.  There  is 
wisdom  in  the  old  legend  that  there  is  something  buried 
in  the  earth,  to  give  foundation  and  existence  to  whatever 
grows  upon  it.  This  should  come  to  be  better  known  as 
the  truth  concerning  the  training  and  ancestry  of  Mr. 
Lincoln. 

He  was  boy  and  man  with  his  people,  growing  up  and 
coming  to  early  manhood  with  them,  of  them,  among  them, 
and,  as  he  proved  constant  to  the  end,  always  one  of 
them. 

The  few  great  reformers  of  the  world  have  done  like- 
wise. Moses  was  the  lifelong  servant  of  his  people,  as  well 
as  servant  and  prophet  of  God.  He  became  the  chosen 
leader  of  his  people,  serving  a  long  lifetime  in  trial,  soli- 
tude, and  preparation,  that  in  his  age  and  infirmity  he 
might  see  the  success  of  all  his  labors,  and  cast  his  vision 
over  the  land  to  the  seas  that  would  be  the  home  of  his 
emancipated  people,  which  they  held  in  prosperity  until 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  13 

their  idolatries,  persecutions,  and  cruelties  surpassed  those 
from  which  they  had  been  rescued  in  Egypt. 

Philip  of  Macedon,  founder  of  one  of  the  greatest  em- 
pires of  antiquity,  spent  a  lifetime  of  patient,  laborious 
work  in  the  camps  and  fields  of  his  armies  and  peoples, 
training  his  invincible  phalanx,  building  an  undisputed 
world's  kingdom,  which  perished  in  less  time  through  the 
quarreling  and  disputes  of  his  successors  over  the  subdi- 
vision of  the  conquest  of  the  daring,  dissipated  Alexander. 
Philip  and  his  son  had  capacity  and  courage  to  build  and 
conquer,  but  not  the  wisdom  to  perpetuate  a  nation  of  in- 
dependent men. 

Great  Cfesar  rose  in  a  lifetime  service  with  his  cam- 
paigning legions  to  a  more  dominant,  more  puissant,  reign- 
ing splendor,  more  triumphant  autocracy,  than  the  Mace- 
donian, for  one  reason:  that  he  served  and  fought  by  the 
side  of  his  Eomans  in  every  country  and  on  every  field 
where  any  foe  raised  its  standards  against  their  all-con- 
quering armies,  and  that  he  had  genius  such  as  soldier 
never  surpassed.  Nevertheless  his  great  empire  rotted 
away  in  the  greed  and  lust  its  wealth  and  arrogated  powers 
had  consolidated.  It  had  no  God  but  money  and  rank; 
and,  without  having  advanced  the  rights  of  man  or  of  hu- 
manity, as  its  supremacy  enabled  it  to  do,  this  world-power 
became  an  easy  prey  to  the  stronger  Northmen,  who  rioted 
and  feasted  for  a  few  short  years  on  its  aggregated  luxuries 
and  world-plundered  riches. 

Savonarola — man,  priest,  and  reformer — rendered  a 
lifetime  service,  became  a  martyr  in  the  devoted  task  of 
raising  men  out  of  the  degraded,  beastly  plight  of  men 
in  his  day,  succeeding  the  bloody,  glutted  reign  of  proud, 
pretentious,  haughty,  and  imperial  Rome,  though  dissolv- 
ing amid  its  tyrant  dynasties,  when  debauched  popes  were 
as  bad  as  the  more  besotted  emperors  had  been.  He  lived, 
served,  and  died  well,  as  one  of  the  best  and  truest  reform- 


14  ABBAHAM  LINCOLN. 

ers  of  all  time,  tliat  man  might  be  what  his  Creator  de- 
signed him  to  be.  This  man  of  a  corrupt  age  was,  in  all 
his  labors,  always  one  of  and  faithful  among  his  people. 

Among  the  favored  and  fearless  few  there  never  came 
another  like  Martin  Luther — God's  hammering  hero — who 
hammered  loose  the  fetters  of  his  people  and  the  world 
from  bigotry  and  persecution,  on  sounding  anvils.  In  peril- 
ous discussions  before,  and  in  cruel  councils,  he  vanquished 
and  arrested  their  oppressions  and  bloody  supremacy.  In 
the  majesty  of  truth  and  human  rights,  against  their  arro- 
gant pretensions  and  iniquitous  cruelties,  under  the  name 
and  usurped  authority  of  the  Savior  of  men  by  priests, 
bishops,  popes,  and  councils,  were  all  swept  before  him 
by  this  master  man,  opening  the  first  real  pathway  to  free- 
dom which  the  world  had  known  for  more  than  a  thousand 
years. 

The  barons  of  England,  who  wrested  "Magna  Cliarta" 
from  their  weak  and  cowardly  King  John  in  1215,  were 
serving  mankind  far  more  and  better  than  they  realized 
at  the  time,  compelling  an  obdurate  despot,  through  his 
timidity  and  want  of  courage,  to  acknowledge  and  guarantee 
the  rights  of  his  subjects  in  part,  thereby  foimrling  con- 
stitutional government  for  the  English  people  for  all  time, 
or  as  long,  at  least,  as  the  so-named  "Anglo-Saxon  peoples" 
are  brave  enough  to  fight  for,  sustain,  and  defend  it.  These 
barons,  like  all  the  feudal  leaders  of  their  time,  could  be 
leaders  when  they  were  with  and  part  of  their  armed  force 
or  following. 

About  the  same  period,  Eobert  Bruce  patiently  served 
his  country,  taught,  trained,  and  gathered  his  clansmen 
for  the  most  determined  and  desperate  defense  of  their 
beloved  Scotland,  braving  every  peril  and  danger,  mak- 
ing every  river  or  lake  or  hill  or  plain  or  mountain  crag 
or  glen  the  home  of  liberty  and  independence  or  a  Scotch- 
man's grave.     No  leader  of  ancient  or  modern  times  was 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  15 

more  among  or  one  of  his  unconquerable  people.  Base 
and  degraded  indeed  is  the  heart  of  any  Scotchman  who 
does  not  honor,  as  one  of  the  bravest  and  strongest  leaders 
in  history,  the  Bruce,  who,  with  William  Wallace,  made  and 
established  Scotland  an  independent  nation, 

Hampden  and  Cromwell  came  to  be  the  leaders  of  the 
English  people  against  the  tyrannical,  usurping  house  of 
Stuart,  to  save  the  liberties  of  a  great  nation,  won  on  so 
many  fiercely-contested  fields  of  war,  through  centuries  of 
progress,  to  a  higher,  more  perfect  manhood.  Hampden, 
bravest  leader  of  them  all,  fell  in  victory  among  them.  Crom- 
well forged  onward  with  his  God-fearing  Puritans,  winning 
victories,  limiting  and  extinguishing  despotisms  and  dy- 
nasties, fighting  for  the  liberties  enjoyed  to-day,  on  every 
smoking  battlefield  on  which  they  fought  and  prayed. 

A  load  of  obloquy,  distortions,  and  grievous  falsehoods 
have  been  lifted  from  the  name  of  England's  fearless  leader 
and  protector.  No  fame  was  ever  more  honestly  earned. 
He  was  true,  sincere,  and  the  earnest  leader  of  his  time 
and  the  cause  of  his  people.  The  English-speaking  peoples, 
the  world  over,  have  better  government  and  better-pro- 
tected liberties  because  Old  Noll  shattered  and  dispersed 
the  house  of  Stuart  with  the  pikestaffs  and  blunderbusses 
of  his  Parliamentary  army. 

William  of  Orange  began,  in  heroic  struggle,  the  de- 
liverance of  his  people  from  the  clutching  bondage  of  such 
Avolfish  savages  as  Parma,  Alva,  and  Philip,  whose  mem- 
ories are  still  reeking  and  groaning  under  the  foul,  out- 
crying load  of  tortured  and  slaughtered  thousands,  whose 
retributive  punishment,  with  their  iniquitous.  Inquisition- 
laden  nation,  will  not  be  complete  until  remorseless, 
dying  Spain  is  as  well  forgotten  as  ancient  Babylon. 

That  the  cruelties  and  savageries  against  the  brave 
Netherlanders  were  among  the  most  frightful  and  appall- 
ing in  any  real  or  pretended  civilization  needs  barely  to 


16  ABE  AH  AM  LINCOLN. 

he  mentioned.  That  William  bared  his  breast  to  the  kill- 
ing storm,  braved  every  danger,  and  died  for  his  people, 
is  as  true.  He  was  and  is  a  leader  whom  God  has  made 
immortal.  Men  may  emulate,  but  never  surpass,  the  work 
of  such  a  hero — one  who  has  served  his  age  so  well  that 
time  Mali  brighten  the  memory  of  a  man  as  valorous  in 
war  as  he  was  wise  and  steadfast  in  counsel  or  leadership. 

Among  the  few  great  reformers  of  all  time  we  must 
not  omit  Saint  Patrick,  who,  in  a  peaceful  and  bloodless 
triumph,  led  the  Irish  race — kings  and  kingdoms  and  the 
people — out  of  ignorance,  superstition,  and  slavish  distress 
that  bound  them  down  in  barbarous  clans  and  clannish 
wars,  to  the  light  and  faith  of  Christ's  gospel  of  peace.  It 
was  no  less  than  a  nation  and  a  race  of  millions  and  suc- 
ceeding generations  turned  from  darkness  and  destroying, 
pillaging  wars,  murders,  and  devastations,  to  the  kingdom 
of  our  Savior,  by  his  ceaseless  labor  in  the  lifetime  of  the 
devoted  Christian,  hero,  leader. 

Since  his  time — the  beginning  of  the  sixth  century — 
the  Irish  race  have  been  the  advance  guard  of  civilization 
and  liberty  to  every  land  under  the  sun,  who,  if  they  could 
not  win  freedom  for  their  own  native  and  dear  old  Ireland, 
have  been  God's  faithful  Christian  heroes,  to  carry  it  and 
die  for  it  with  the  struggling  and  oppressed  of  every  clime. 

Christianity,  under  the  lead  of  this  daring  man,  turned 
this  great  race  from  their  degradation  and  half-savage 
condition  to  a  nation  of  scholars,  humorists,  statesmen,  sol- 
diers, and  heroes,  who  are  seldom  equaled  and  never  sur- 
passed. 

Under  the  three  great  leaders,  the  triple  heroes  of  Brit- 
ain— Saint  Patrick,  John  Knox,  and  Oliver  Cromwell — 
and  their  successors,  have  grown  the  strongest  and  most 
predominant  force  of  men  whom  the  world  has  ever  known; 
further,  blended  and  commingled  with  a  strong  admixture 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  17 

of  the  sturdy  Germanic,  have  produced  the  American,  the 
strongest  individual  character  and  manhood  in  existence, — 
all  of  whom,  if  true  to  their  lineage  and  exalted  conditions, 
if  their  cursed  drink-habits  were  abated,  would  carry,  not 
a  plundering,  but  a  pure.  Christian  civilization  all  over  the 
world. 

There  is  an  allegory,  with  many  terminating  distinc- 
tions, as  to  the  elementary  character  of  the  English,  Scotch, 
Irish,  and  American.  One  is  that  a  person  asked,  severally, 
these  to  undertake  a  hazardous  enterprise.  The  English- 
man said  he  would  if  he  could  adjust  it  under  "Magna 
Charta"  and  the  precedents  of  English  law  and  literature. 
The  Scotchman  said  "he  would  meditate  over  it  in  prayer 
and  thanksgiving  when  it  approved  itself  to  his  mind." 
The  Irishman  said,  "By  the  faith  of  Saint  Patrick,  Oi  'm 
ready,  sor;"  and  the  American,  "Sir,  I  will  undertake  it 
if  it  will  pay  on  these  terms:  twenty-five  per  cent  in  ad- 
vance, and  the  balance  in  quarterly  installments." 

There  remains  for  our  thoughful  consideration  the  most 
capable,  zealous,  and  devout  spiritual  reformer  of  the  Chris- 
tian Church  and  the  greatest  founder  of  a  world-wide  Chris- 
tianity since  Saint  Paul — John  Wesley — whose  life  and 
labors  for  sixty  of  the  years  of  the  eighteenth  century  laid 
the  foundation  for  the  most  powerful  body  of  spiritual, 
believing,  and  faith-proving  Christians  in  the  world — a  de- 
nomination growing  out  of  a  little  sect  of  reformers  in 
a  dull  and  lifeless  State  establishment  to  a  world-extending 
activity,  with  more  millions  now  than  the  England  of  Wes- 
ley's day. 

He  became  an  accredited  apostle  of  the  Lord  Jesus 
Christ.  He  saw  the  great  English  Church,  that  had  so 
grandly  risen  above  Eomanism,  falling  away  and  perishing, 
without  spirituality  or  belief  in  the  absolute  necessity  of 
regeneration,  another  victim  of  postures,  precedents,  and 
2 


18  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

formulas.  He  obliterated  self,  and  in  a  tireless  itinerary, 
work,  and  devotion  of  more  than  a  half  century,  proclaimed 
anew  the  saving  faith  of  Christ's  gospel  over  two  continents. 

He  had  wrought  out  a  religious  revolution,  and  founded 
one  of  the  world's  strongest  bodies  of  God-loving  people, 
while  content  in  the  belief  that  he  was  saving  the  Church 
of  his  people  and  their  ancestors  from  listless  and  God- 
less decay.  He  did  even  that  which  no  other  man  had 
done  or  seemed  able  to  do:  revived  and,  for  the  time,  saved 
the  Establishment. 

He  preached  and  pleaded  and  entreated  men  to  turn 
from  their  sins  in  every  city,  town,  highway,  mine,  factory, 
lane,  and  byway  he  could  reach,  leading  them  to  repent- 
ance and  bettered  lives  in  multitudes  beyond  number,  full 
of  the  conviction  that  in  every  human  face  he  saw  a  soul 
to  save. 

He  had  the  grace,  the  zeal,  the  untiring  energy,  and 
the  power  of  not  only  one,  but  many  of  the  first  of  the 
faith,  who  worked  and  served  with  the  Master  himself 
as  he  reasoned  and  taught  in  Judea.  He  had  the  marvel- 
ous patience  and  directness  of  speech  of  Saint  Matthew, 
whose  record  grows  more  precious  as  centuries  roll  on.  He 
had  the  polish  and  accuracy  of  Saint  Luke,  the  scholar,  who 
told  the  gospel  story  more  gracefully  than  Saint  Paul  him- 
self— the  most  learned,  convincing,  logical,  and  eloquent 
of  all  the  Twelve.  He  had  the  fire  and  thunder  of  good, 
old  Peter,  and  often  brought  three  thousand,  or  more,  to 
the  faith  in  a  single  sermon,  so  plaintive  and  eloquent  that 
strong  men  and  women  shouted  all  about  him  in  thousands. 
He  had  the  mellowed  mind,  the  power  of  imagery,  and  the 
tender  heart  of  the  disciple  "whom  Jesus  loved.""  He  was, 
all  in  all,  a  man,  leader,  and  reformer,  without  money  or 
even  the  power  to  call  his  great  and  increasing  body  of 
followers  a  Church  or  separate  organization,  who  had  done 
more  for  mankind  than  all  the  kings  of  England  lumped 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  19 

together,  with  Croesus  and  all  the  world's  millionaires  since 
thrown  in  as  make-weight. 

As  we  review  the  lives  and  character  of  such  men  as 
Wesley  and  Lincoln,  we  can  well  understand  the  high  dis- 
tinction and  duty  that  was  open  to  the  youth  whom  Christ 
admonished,  "Go  and  sell  all  that  thou  hast,  and  give  to 
the  poor,  and  thou  shalt  have  treasure  in  heaven,  and  come 
and  follow  me." 

When  the  American  colonies  were  about  founding  a 
new  nation  and  establishing  a  new  era  among  the  Govern- 
ments and  powers  of  the  earth,  almost  eighteen  dull,  leaden 
centuries  had  passed  since  the  truth  concerning  man's  ex- 
istence had  been  promulgated;  when  Calvary  succeeded 
Sinai;  when  sacrifice  beyond  human  conception  or  under- 
standing opened  the  way,  lighted  the  world  with  a  belief, 
a  gospel  founded  on  God's  eternal  truth,  with  glad  tidings 
of  peace  on  earth  and  good  will  to  men;  that  in  govern- 
ment, as  in  all  the  relations  of  life,  men  must  cease  to  do 
evil,  and  learn  righteousness,  justice,  forgiveness,  mercy, 
peace,  and  the  absolute  equality  of  all  men  before  God. 

Discovery  after  discovery  had  found  new  continents, 
and  had  revealed  almost  endless  new  elements  and  resources 
in  nature,  far  surpassing  the  Avildest  dreams  of  antiquity, 
when  the  fabled  ''Atlantis"  was  far  out  of  reach  of  their 
clumsy  coast-line  navigation,  when  a  fiattened-plane  sur- 
face of  the  earth,  an  endless  westward  ocean,  and  a  revolv- 
ing sun  marked  the  limits  of  human  philosophy. 

Gunpowder  had  ameliorated  the  barbarities  of  war.  Sci- 
ence came  to  the  relief  of  the  weak  and  oppressed  when  a 
robber  baron  and  predatory  king,  or  lesser  villains,  with 
their  marauding  clans  and  men-at-arms,  on  their  incur- 
sions, prudently  halted  outside  the  zone  of  the  powder-mill. 
Printing  had  made  a  new  world  of  intelligence.  The  silent, 
movable  types  could  preserve  and  communicate  the  best, 
the  brightest,  and  the  mightiest  thought  to  the  remotest 


20  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

recesses,  into  the  ignorance,  darkness,  and  iniquity  that 
filled  men's  lives,  but  which  fled  and  dissipated  before  these 
new  agencies  like  the  mists  and  the  gloom  in  the  belts  of 
the  noonday  sun. 

Luther  had  overturned  a  priestly,  tyrannical  hierarchy; 
the  angered,  broken  fragments  were  cooling  quietly  down 
after  the  furious  sundering  of  beliefs;  policies  and  social 
order  had  wonderfully  changed,  and  men  were  readjusting 
themselves  as  much  as  could  be  to  the  very  much  changed 
condition  of  things  in  all  the  business  and  conduct  of  life. 
The  hard,  unyielding  logic  of  his  reform  had  turned  na- 
tions from  a  blind  superstition  under  the  name  of  religion 
to  free,  independent,  thoughtful  beliefs.  Priestcraft,  as 
a  governing,  controlling,  and  punishing  power,  had  been 
overthrown;  and  the  minds  of  men  could  turn  peacefully 
to  their  Maker  and  the  pursuit  of  their  welfare  and  happi- 
ness when  despotic  kings  were  as  completely  overthrown 
as  the  priests  had  been  in  their  campaigns  and  battles  with 
Luther. 

In  time  Cromwell  overthrew  and  destroyed  a  house  of 
these  despotic  little  men,  calling  themselves  kings  by  Di- 
vine right,  and  arrogating  under  this  authority  the  disposal 
of  the  lives  and  fortunes  of  their  fellow-men.  They  were, 
perhaps,  the  worst  of  their  kind  and  time,  because  they 
were  endeavoring  to  throttle  and  destroy  the  rights,  privi- 
leges, and  liberties  of  an  intelligent,  almost  a  free  people — 
the  leading  nation  of  the  earth  at  the  time — on  its  high 
road  to  progress  and  a  bettered  condition  for  all  its  people. 

It  is  in  analysis,  dissection,  cutting  away  false  ideas, 
and  by  comparison,  that  we  are  able  to  estimate  and  under- 
stand the  acts  of  men,  and  follow  the  course  of  events. 
These  leaders — fair  representatives  of  the  best  and  most 
noted  in  history — have  from  necessity  passed  in  hurried 
review.  More  might  be  added;  but  we  would  only  be  giv- 
ing the  record  and  work  of  other  men  with  the  same  ideas 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  21 

and  purposes.  We  are  to  study  men,  government,  and  the 
conduct  of  public  affairs  under  changed  conditions — a  new 
continent,  where  men  are  devoted  to  and  will  sustain  the 
principle  that  all  Governments  derive  their  just  powers 
from  the  consent  of  the  governed. 

In  time  multitudes  in  full  accord  on  the  subject,  in  vast 
numbers,  considering  the  occasion,  the  cause,  and  the  op- 
portunities, sought  and  found  homes  on  the  American 
Continent,  free  and  unbound  by  the  priestcraft  and  the 
monarchical,  labor-robbing,  man-killing  codes  of  Europe, 
from  which  they  had  fled,  hoping  and  praying  for  a  com- 
plete deliverance  from  the  systems  that  had  despoiled  and 
degraded  men  for  centuries,  and  from  which,  although  be- 
set by  all  manner  of  difficulties,  and  their  habitations  still 
a  wilderness,  they  continually  hoped  for  the  wisdom  and 
strength  that  would  make  them  a  free  and  independent 
people.  They  saw  in  their  early  beginnings  the  light  and 
promise  of  a  better  civilization.  They  were  hungering  and 
thirsting  for  the  enjoyment  of  the  liberties  they  had  so 
diligently  earned.  Fast-hurrying  events  brought  the  crisis 
that  made  them,  for  the  time,  the  defenders  of  human 
rights.  It  was  a  trying  and  desperate  struggle,  marking 
it  as  a  distinct  epoch  in  the  path  of  man's  development. 
Victory,  after  seven  years  of  wasting  war,  brought  an  un- 
kinged nation  to  a  new  world,  a  new  era,  and  renewed 
hopes  to  mankind. 

Britain  had  grown  to  be,  at  the  time,  the  great  sea 
power  of  the  world,  with  as  greedy  desire  for  domination 
and  plunder,  under  the  name  of  an  enlightened  nation, 
extending  its  ideas,  influences,  and  commerce  over  the  earth, 
as  it  has  done,  and  as  it  professes  in  these  later  days,  with 
all  of  them  prospered  and  maintained.  They  are  propa- 
gating and  enforcing  all  these  ideas  against  mankind  with 
all  their  power  and  strength.  Their  plans  of  government 
have  as  full  possession  of  their  rulers,  soldiers,  statesmen. 


22  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

and  commercial  people  for  trade  supremacy  as  they  had 
under  the  Georges.  The  well-formed  purpose  then,  as 
now,  is  to  trade  with  and  govern  all  the  weak  peoples  of 
the  earth  indiscriminately,  sequestrate  the  rights  and  prop- 
erty possessions  of  every  country  or  kingdom  which  their 
armies  or  navies  can  reach  and  subdue. 

In  time,  following  the  "divine"  Stuarts,  some  royal 
exiles,  under  the  wings  of  the  kingdoms,  dukedoms,  and 
other  aristocracies  of  the  Continent  of  Europe,  there  grew 
another  smaller  line  of  kings  and  princes  for  the  Island 
Kingdom.  The  well-fed  house  of  Hanover  crossed  over, 
came  to  and  held  the  ancestral  halls,  the  castles,  manors, 
and  crown  lands,  and  succeeded  to  the  prerogatives,  pre- 
tensions and  all,  of  the  removed  dynasty  of  Stuart. 
In  this  line  of  foreign  bred  and  born  aristocrats  came 
George  HE,  king  of  Britain,  king  of  Ireland,  king  of  the 
American  Colonies,  the  dull  and  stupid  helper  of  freedom 
and  free  government  for  the  American  Continent,  unwill- 
ingly enough,  and  disastrously  beyond  European  thought 
or  expectation.  The  avaricious  and  rapacious  taxes  of  his 
reign  and  administration  drove  the  overtaxed,  unrepre- 
sented subjects  into  rebellion,  and  succeeding,  therefore 
ripening  into  revolution;  for  they  did  succeed  and  establish 
our  great  Eepublic. 

In  our  limited  understanding,  God's  movements  are 
slow  and  deliberate.  The  footprints  of  great  and  deter- 
mining events  are  often  measured  by  centuries,  as  often 
mysterious,  deeply  laid,  and  far  beyond  our  intelligence. 
Nevertheless  they  are  certain,  positive,  and  sure  to  come, 
as  much  so  as  that  atom  unites  with  atom  in  every  growth 
or  development,  or  that  suns  and  systems  move  in  rapidity, 
precision,  and  power  farther  above  our  comprehension  than 
we  are  to  that  of  the  smallest  unseen  existence  about  us. 
It  was  a  long  period  of  trial,  with  patient  and  hopeful  wait- 
ing, for  the  beginnings  and  grov/th  of  a  nation,  from  Abra- 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  23 

ham,  through  the  captivity  and  bondage,  to  Moses  and 
the  deliverance,  and  through  continuing  struggles,  con- 
tests, defeats,  victories,  and  final  achievement  to  David, 
when  God  fulfilled  his  promise  to  Abraham,  and  firmly  estab- 
lished the  favored  and  povs^erful  Hebrew  nation  of  antiquity. 
Then  again  it  was  a  deeper,  more  mysterious,  more  uncer- 
tain lapse  of  centuries,  through  superstitious  idolatries  and 
moldering  away  of  many  godless  nations,  from  David  the 
founder  and  Solomon's  blazing  splendor  to  a  provincial 
Roman  State  at  Calvary. 

It  was  a  darker,  more  deeply  ignorant  lapse  of  ages  that 
followed  as  the  Asiatic  nations  and  the  chosen  Hebrew 
peoples  were  scattering,  dissolving,  crumbling  away  from 
nations  and  strong  subdivisions  to  roving  tribes  of  the 
forests,  mountains,  and  deserts,  and  forced  fleeing  emi- 
grants to  Western  Europe.  Nevertheless  the  good  lay  deep 
in  the  breaking  up  and  dispersions  of  those  indolent  Asiatics, 
yet  the  best-informed  people  then  living. 

The  Eoman  and  other  strong  Western  empires  and  na- 
tions were  builded  and  building  when  the  story  of  Calvary, 
the  gospel  of  a  perfect  manhood,  was  announced,  after  long 
and  almost  hopeless  disappointments,  cruelties,  and  delays. 
Nevertheless  it  became  the  fundamental  belief  of  those 
mighty  moving  Western  peoples.  Thus,  in  the  scattered 
movement  for  its  beginning,  Christ's  gospel  became  the  all- 
important  propaganda  of  millions  who  advanced  by  littles, 
through  long,  weary  periods,  or,  sometimes,  in  sudden,  over- 
whelming triumph,  like  that  of  Luther,  Cromwell,  Calvin, 
Knox,  Wesley,  and  Whitefield,  to  higher  planes  of  exist- 
ence, until  it  has  girdled  the  earth. 

In  1776  the  American  Colonies  had  exhausted  all  honor- 
able means  to  avoid  the  threatened  conflict  with  Britain. 
All  reasonable  plans  and  propositions  suggested  for  the 
settlement  of  differences  between  them  had  been  tried  on 
the  part  of  the  Colonies,  with  the  invariable  result  that 


24  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN, 

they  were  not  recognized  as  a  party  in  any  proposed  set- 
tlement by  any  British  ministry;  and  their  demand  for 
representation  in  any  Government  by  which  they  were  to 
be  taxed  was  as  promptly  rejected  as  it  was  proposed,  gen- 
erally without  consideration. 

The  Colonies  were  strong,  and  were  growing.  They  were 
full  of  confidence  in  their  just  and  righteous  cause.  They 
rightly  determined  to  resist  taxation  without  their  con- 
sent; for  they  fully  understood  that,  if  the  power  to  tax 
them  ^vithout  their  consent  was  conceded,  although  the  tax 
might  be  trivial  and  inconsequential  to  begin  with,  the 
power  so  conceded  could  be,  and  it  surely  and  certainly 
would  be,  used  to  reduce  them  to  the  lowest  conditions  of 
existence.  It  would  be  a  state  of  abject  poverty  and  want, 
such  as  that  to  which  Britain  had  even  at  that  early  period 
reduced  and  beggared  some  of  the  most  thriving  parts  of 
Ireland. 

The  Emerald  Isle  is  one  of  the  most  beautiful,  fertile, 
and  productive  islands  of  the  sea;  yet  so  much  and  so  long 
overtaxed  and  rackrented  has  it  been  for  centuries  that 
its  thrifty,  industrious  people  have  found  relief  from  starva- 
tion only  by  emigration  in  multitudes.  No  land  is  so  in- 
hospitable as  his  own  rich  gem  of  the  ocean  to  the  Irish- 
man, who  has  found  home  and  prosperity  in  every  land 
and  clime,  where  his  skill  and  labor  always  improve  and 
help  to  build;  so  much  in  our  favored  country,  that  we 
are  not  only  a  Greater  Britain,  but  a  Greater  Ireland. 

In  the  territorial  distribution  sure  to  follow  the  next 
general  contest  and  world's  upheaval,  like  that  of  the  ]^a- 
poleonic  wars,  when  we  doubled  our  landed  area,  and  ex- 
panded to  the  Gulf  of  Mexico  and  the  Pacific  Ocean,  we 
should  be  ready — not  as  a  war  power,  but  a  peace-making 
one — ^to  enforce  our  decisions,  to  declare  that  the  time  has 
come  for  the  removal  of  every  foreign  power  from  the 
American   Continents,  and  to   offer  our  good   offices   and 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  25 

friendly  intervention  for  the  readjustment  and  settlement 
of  disputes  between  the  broken-down  land-hunters  of  Europe. 
It  should  be  settled,  once  for  all,  that  lordly  land-grabbing 
footpads  must  quit  our  Western  world. 

The  present  threatened  upheaval,  dismemberment,  and 
realignment  of  nations  is  as  sure  to  come  as  that  Asia 
and  Europe  have  been  torn  into  territorial  fragments,  and 
redivided  on  battlefields  by  almost  every  generation  "for 
fort}''  centuries."  It  is  coming  now,  as  the  inevitable  con- 
sequence of  armed  millions  subsisting  upon  and  impover- 
ishing the  producing  classes,  who  have  long  passed  the  lim- 
its of  comfortable  endurance,  and  are  now  perishing  by 
the  hundred  millions  from  diseases,  pestilences,  and  fam- 
ines, wasting  away,  sometimes  in  uncounted  myriads,  like 
those  of  Ireland  and  India,  overworked,  overtaxed,  under- 
fed, and  dying  in  want. 

When  these  land-robbing,  plundering,  sea-roving  em- 
presses, emperors,  kings,  sultans,  pashas,  presidents,  smaller 
rulers,  and  adventurers  have  hammered  and  pounded  their 
armies  to  fragments  against  each  other — as  they  are  sure 
to  do — and  have  become  tractable,  because  powerless,  it 
will  become  our  right,  duty,  and  prerogative  to  declare  our 
dominant  power  in  the  Western  world. 

In  the  settlement  that  will  come  after  defeat  and  ex- 
haustion, a  general  treaty  of  peace  can  be  concluded  be- 
tween the  enlightened  Christian  nations  of  the  world,  which 
should  be  held  in  Washington  City.  Our  interest  must  be 
under  the  control  and  conduct  of  an  able-minded,  as  it  will 
be  an  able-bodied,  thoroughly  American  administration, 
that  will  see  to  it  that  all  the  nations  and  peoples  of  these 
Continents  shall  be  protected  in  the  exercise  of  self-gov- 
ernment, with  plans  and  policies  adapted  to  their  condi- 
tions and  the  rights  of  men. 

In  such  a  settlement  it  will  be  eminently  proper  and 
no  more  than  long-delayed  justice  that  the  United  States 


26  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

shall  acquire  and  have  all  the  territory  known  as  British 
Columbia,  from  Lake  Superior  to  Behring  Sea.  This  vast, 
resourceful  region  was  adventured  from  our  approaching, 
very  natural  expansion  from  1840  to  1850,  when  the  Re- 
public was  under  the  spell  of  the  slave  propaganda.  As 
Britain  was  one  of  the  chief  beneficiaries  of  that  horrid 
system  and  the  war  for  its  supremacy,  it  becomes  part  of 
any  just  accounting  between  us  that  this  region,  so  neces- 
sary for  our  progress  and  legitimate  expansion,  should  be 
given  to  us,  and  that  Ireland,  in  consideration  of  the  well- 
known  aversion  of  the  Irish  people  to  British  rule,  should 
become  one  of  the  States  of  the  American  Union. 

This  would  be  no  more  than  fair  dealing  between  us, 
and  less  than  Britain  would  exact  from  us  if  our  situations 
were  reversed.  It  would  be  a  welcome  settlement  to  the 
Irish  people,  who  would  achieve  their  long-desired  hope  of 
a  free,  emancipated  Ireland.  It  would  bring  us  less  than 
we  are  entitled  to  for  the  destruction  of  our  commerce,  the 
vandalism  of  burning  our  Capitol  in  1812,  and  the  greatest 
naval  conflagration  and  destruction  ever  known,  when  our 
ships  and  shipping  were  sunk,  burned  by  hundreds,  and 
swept  from  the  face  of  the  seas  by  English  men,  guns,  ships, 
and  money,  under  control  and  contrivance  of  juggling  Brit- 
ish administrations. 

These  territorial  concessions  to  us  would  not  be  fair 
remuneration  for  the  full  fifteen  hundred  millions'  value 
of  our  sunken  ships  and  obliterated  commerce ;  but  it  would 
prove  a  wholesome  lesson  to  monarchs  and  greedy-minded 
people,  and  it  might  pave  the  way  and  make  a  starting- 
point  for  the  proposed  "alliance  of  all  English-speaking 
peoples."  To  the  American  people  it  is  a  duty,  like  the 
settlement  of  an  account  long  past  due.  It  would  give  us 
territory  necessary  for  our  progress  and  development,  settle 
the  strained  conditions  in  Ireland,  and  be  the  most  we 
could  expect  as  moral  compensation  and  punitive  retribu- 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  27 

tion  for  our  losses  in  war  and  the  attempted  dismember- 
ment of  our  Eepublic  in  the  war  for  the  Union  against  Brit- 
ain and  the  Confederate  States. 

After  long  suffering,  tedious  waiting,  and  with  only 
partial  advances  toward  free  government  in  Western 
Europe,  but  in  the  fullness  of  time  in  1776,  another  era 
of  progress  was  coming  to  a  more  Western  people.  The 
accumulating  effects  of  the  noble  work  of  Luther,  Crom- 
well, and  thousands  of  their  associates  and  followers,  had 
loosened  the  grasp  of  tyrants  throughout  the  civilized  world; 
but  the  Lion's  clutch  was  still  firm,  and  his  fangs  and  claws 
were  deep  in  the  heart  of  the  American  Colonies.  They  had 
prepared  for  the  struggle  as  best  they  could,  and  were  as 
ready  for  it  as  they  could  ever  expect  to  be.  Many  of  them, 
by  their  pioneer  training  and  experience,  had  become  the 
best  of  soldiers  for  the  desultory  skirmishing  campaigns  in 
which  the  war  was  to  be  conducted. 

These  people,  with  their  ancestors  of  not  more  than 
fwo  generations  at  farthest,  had  been  driven  from  the  do- 
minions of  the  despots,  great  and  small,  of  Western  Europe, 
because  of  their  religious  or  political  beliefs.  Many  of 
them  had  been  sent  and  brought  to  our  shores  with  the 
hope  that  they  would  perish  from  hunger  or  the  scalping- 
knife  of  the  savage  Indians  in  the  wilderness.  They  had, 
unexpectedly  to  many,  survived  and  become  so  prosperous 
that  they  were  to  be  plundered  and  taxed  by  the  tyrants 
they  had  escaped  from  as  their  subjects  near  and  about  them. 

These  straggling  communities — colonies — stretching 
along  the  Atlantic  coast  for  about  one  thousand  miles — 
scarcely  more — with  the  savage  Indians  on  one  side  of  them 
all  the  way,  and  the  sea  and  British  fleets  along  the  entire 
coast-line  on  the  other  side  all  the  way,  with  less  than  three 
millions  of  people,  revolted,  and  defied  in  war  the  greatest 
sea  power  of  the  earth  at  the  time,  and  in  every  other  way 
one  of  the  most  powerful  nations  in  existence. 


28  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

They  had  the  courage  and  were  ready  to  fight.  After 
their  revolt  they  were  compelled  either  to  do  that  or  sub- 
mit to  a  miore  galling  restriction,  supervision,  taxation,  and 
punishment,  because  they  had  complained  and  resisted  the 
authority  of  the  Hanoverian  king  of  Britain  to  tax  them 
without  representation,  besides  other  grievances. 

It  is  the  highest  tribute  to  the  courage,  honor,  and  pa- 
triotism of  the  heroes  of  the  Kevolution  that,  fully  aware 
and  cognizant  of  all  their  surroundings,  knowing  well  their 
weakness  and  their  helpless  condition,  compared  with  the 
powerful  nation  with  which  they  had  to  contend,  and  the 
difficulties  and  dangers  that  beset  them  on  every  hand,  they 
welcomed  death  a  thousand  times  rather  than  to  live  under 
the  bondage  of  plundering  kings,  whether  of  Hanover  or 
the  equally  greedy  lines  of  Stuart,  Tudor,  or  Plantagenet. 

The  time  was  at  hand,  April,  1775.  The  clock  in  the 
Old  South  Church,  of  Boston,  struck  the  hour  for  the  call 
to  arms  that  would  herald  the  rising  of  one  of  the  greatest 
nations  of  all  time  on  the  field  of  Lexington  before  another 
sun  went  down.  The  conflict  was  upon  them.  The  gather- 
ing storm  had  burst,  and  darker  days  than  those  on  Marston 
Moor  and  jSTaseby  were  threatening  and  hanging  over  them; 
but  not  a  man  faltered;  and  the  Colonies  mustered  for  the 
unequal  conflict  from  the  pine-clad  Green  Mountains  to 
the  savannas  of  Georgia. 

The  Colonies  were  scattered,  we  said,  along  a  rough 
and  rugged  coast,  which  seemed  their  danger  and  incon- 
venience in  the  beginning  for  Avant  of  communication  and 
co-operation;  but  this  became  much  of  their  salvation  as 
the  strugs:le  raged  and  lasted  through  so  manv  tedious  vears. 
They  gathered  for  war  as  they  had  done  for  their  industrial 
pursuits,  with  whatever  arms,  defensible  weapons,  or  equip- 
ments they  had ;  and,  having  little  for  display  or  the  means 
to  keep  up  the  forms  of  military  service,  every  man  knew 
the  capacity  and  strength  of  the  arms  he  had,  and,  better. 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  29 

had  the  knowledge  himself  how  best  to  use  them,  and  had 
reached  the  settled  determination  to  win  or  die.  Thus  in 
the  cold  springtime  of  1775  these  persecuted,  wilderness- 
driven  patriots  were  on  the  field  for  war;  but  who  and 
where  was  the  leader,  another  Bruce  or  Cromwell,  who  could 
lead  his  people  and  save  them  and  their  liberties? 

God  is  always  ready,  and  fulfills  his  promises  to  the 
nations  that  remember  him  as  he  does  to  the  men  who  wait 
on  and  faithfully  serve  him,  A  few  unexpected  catastro- 
phes— such  as  the  tea  destruction  in  Boston  harbor;  an 
affronted  British  officer  in  the  streets  of  Boston;  the  fiery, 
impassioned  appeal  of  Patrick  Henry  in  the  Virginia  House 
of  Burgesses,  that  swept  the  Eoyalists  before  him  as  the 
lashing  storms  do  the  fishing-boats  and  yawls  off  Cape  Hat- 
teras — incidents  such  as  these,  and  the  already  separated 
Carolinians  fired  the  tinder,  opened  the  way  for  the  open- 
ing and  declaration  of  the  most  notable  conflict  of  modern 
times,  because  of  the  vital  issues  involved — the  first  after 
Luther  and  Cromwell  when  free,  stalwart  men  were  to  con- 
tend with  kings  and  hierarchies  for  their  lives,  civil  and 
religious  liberty,  and  the  right  to  govern  themselves. 

Of  all  such  contests  against  tjTanny  and  oppression,  that 
of  the  Colonies  against  powerful  Britain  appeared  the  most 
hopeless  in  the  beginning.  It  was  considered  preposterous 
that  a  few  half-settled  Colonies,  on  a  long  shore-line,  with- 
out organization  of  forces,  without  a  navy  of  any  kind, 
wathout  plans  or  forms  for  military  service  of  any  kind, 
good  or  bad,  for  war  or  defense,  save  the  rugged  determi- 
nation to  resist  the  encroachment  of  the  king  and  his  armed 
forces  as  they  did  those  of  the  savage  Indians  on  their 
Western  borders,  had  ventured  a  revolt.  They  had  few 
guns,  arms,  or  equipments  of  any  kind.  Of  those  they  had, 
about  all  of  them  were  those  which  the  Colonial  volunteers 
had  been  supplied  with  in  the  campaigns  against  the  French 
and  Indians  not  long  before.     They  had  poor  means  for 


30  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

army  transportation.  Their  future  equipment,  like  their 
success,  depended  on  how  many  of  the  enemy  they  would 
be  able  to  capture  and  disarm.  They  had  few  vessels  or 
water  craft  for  coast-line  and  river  commerce,  none  except 
the  fishing-boats  of  the  shore  towns.  Their  principal  com- 
merce was  with  the  mother  country,  all  of  which  was  car- 
ried in  foreign  ships.  They  had  no  means  for  the  gather- 
ing, mustering,  and  co-operation  of  large  bodies  of  troops, 
and  none  for  supplying,  equipping,  and  subsisting  them 
if  they  had  been  assembled.  In  the  beginning  their  entire 
resources  for  the  purpose  would  not  have  equipped  an  army 
of  ten  thousand  in  the  poor,  half-supplied  manner  in  which 
their  first  recruits  took  the  field. 

Without  being  supplied  with  the  ordinary  arms  and 
means  of  resistance  common  at  the  time,  it  seemed  pre- 
sumptuous hardihood  indeed  for  a  few  weak,  scattered 
Colonies  to  contend  against  one  of  the  most  powerful  na- 
tions of  the  earth,  with  well  equipped  and  supplied  armies 
for  land  service  and  a  navy  more  than  double  the  power 
and  strength  of  any  other  nation  then  in  existence. 

In  the  ordinary  course  of  wars  and  contentions,  it  was 
not  considered  a  possibility  for  the  Colonists  to  succeed. 
The  power  to  be  contended  with  was  so  strong  in  men  and 
arms  and  the  experience  of  its  armed  forces,  and  so  well  fitted 
and  prepared  for  war,  which  was  a  continuous  occupation 
of  a  large  part  of  its  bravest,  hardiest  men,  that,  without 
something  more  than  human  help  and  interposition,  the 
destruction  of  the  Colonies  appeared  certain,  and  that  their 
once  happy,  free,  and  independent  homes  would  be  a  deso- 
lation, to  mark  the  end  of  the  rebels  against  the  rule  of 
the  most  Christian  king  and  defender  of  the  faith  of  Britain. 

When  the  case  was  made  up,  and  every  impartial  author- 
ity had  delivered  judgment,  the  cause  of  the  Colonies  was 
considered  a  hopeless,  daring  venture,  rather  than  a  deter- 
mined purpose   of  those  hardy  pioneers  and  refugees  to 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  31 

establish  their  independence,  when  nothing  but  submission 
after  severe  punishment  was  expected.  The  precedents  in 
history  were  against  them:  the  Greek  and  Slavic  peoples 
had  fallen  by  thousands  in  many  unsuccessful  struggles 
against  despots  for  liberty;  and  Poland,  brave  Poland,  then 
lay  bleeding,  dismembered,  blotted  from  the  map  of  Europe 
by  crowned  murderers,  who  turned  its  beautiful  cities  into 
charnel-houses. 

But  God,  the  Euler  "who  holds  all  things  in  the  hol- 
low of  his  hand" — or  Providence,  as  we  call  the  Majestic 
Creator  of  worlds  and  suns  and  systems — was  preparing 
men  for  his  work  when,  by  his  will,  this  same  British  nation, 
through  its  Dinwiddies,  Fairfaxes,  and  Braddocks,  gov- 
ernors, generals,  and  soldiers,  in  numberless  undertakings, 
hard  service,  and  campaigns  against  their  French  and  In- 
dian enemies,  and  in  civil  as  well  as  military  preparation, 
raised  up  the  man  to  lead,  trained,  developed,  and  fitted 
him  in  severe  service  and  hardships  in  five  years'  campaign- 
ing, preparing  his  body  and  mind  on  the  field  and  in  council 
and  administration,  making  him  the  man  for  the  time. 
As  he  developed,  he  became  the  disciplined  leader  who  was 
to  lead  these  same  weak,  helpless  Colonies  to  the  most  re- 
noMTied  victory  in  all  time  in  behalf  of  the  rights  and  free- 
dom of  his  fellow-men  to  the  founding  of  the  great  Amer- 
ican Republic. 

What  men  could  not  accomplish  or  comprehend,  the  wise 
Father  did  so  wisely  and  so  well  that  tyrants,  aristocracies, 
and  class-making  plutocrats  will  hesitate  for  centuries  to 
destroy  a  nation  that  took  so  much  of  suffering,  sacrifice, 
and  death  to  establish.  Under  his  leadership,  Washington 
and  his  men  made  the  weak,  persecuted,  conscience-driven 
pioneers  the  founders  of  the  freest  and  best  Government 
that  the  world  has  ever  known.  It  will  last  just  as  long  as 
we  are  true  to  Him  who  planted  it  in  the  blood  and  long- 
suffering  of  his  heroes. 


32  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

"Washington  was  a  genius  adapted  to  the  great  ■work. 
He  became  a  great  leader,  not  through  great  victories  or 
triumphal  campaigns,  but  by  careful  attention  to  his  duty 
and  the  rare  sense  of  how  to  do  it  best,  beginning  in  his 
younger  manhood.  Through  his  tutelage  and  development, 
farming,  surveying,  pioneering,  and  through  his  service, 
instruction,  and  campaigning  with  his  British  employers, 
associates,  and  commanders,  his  habits  never  changed.  In 
all  he  passed  through  a  service  of  disasters,  defeats,  and 
disappointments,  fitting  him  as  no  other  work  or  experience 
could  have  done,  for  the  patient  endurance  which  was  ab- 
solutely necessary  throughout  his  life  and  leadership.  He 
conducted  his  campaigns  through  all  kinds  of  besetments, 
without  achieving  any  decisive  or  remarkable  victory,  until 
his  closing  and  almost  concluding  one,  which  resulted  in 
the  defeat  and  capture  of  Lord  Cornwallis  and  his  army  at 
Yorktown  and  the  subsequent  driving  of  every  hostile  force 
from  the  Colonies.  He  won  his  final  victory  and  success 
in  long  years  of  patient  waiting,  but  no  less  in  terribly 
earnest  work  and  campaigning,  whenever  it  was  possible  for 
him  to  strike  or  to  retreat. 

Such  persevering  devotion  and  service  had  never  been 
considered  feasible  or  possible.  His  harassing,  continuous 
attacking,  never  giving  up,  always  ready  for  assaulting  or 
retreating  campaigns  and  plan  of  war,  led  all  the  British 
armies  to  such  marching,  pursuing,  defending,  and  never- 
knowing-what-to-do  sort  of  condition,  that  they  were  in 
constant  fatigue,  worn  out.  disappointed,  disheartened,  un- 
certain, and  eventually  dissipated  and  defeated  by  the  sleep- 
less, ever-moving,  always-fighting  Continentals  under  Wash- 
ington, who  fought  the  fine,  well-equipped  armies  so  con- 
stantly, from  every  nook  and  corner  and  vantage  position, 
from  all  sides,  so  persistently  and  incessantly  that  their 
strong,  best  fitted-out  armies  melted  away  in  fruitless  ef- 
forts and  campaigns  against  patriots  fighting  for  their  ex- 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  33 

istence,  whom  they  could  neither  conquer  nor  capture. 
These  British  armies,  with  their  mercenary  auxiliaries, 
fought  the  revolting  Colonies  for  seven  long  years,  until 
Clinton,  Hudson,  Lowe,  Burgoyne,  and  Cornwallis,  with 
defeated  or  captured  armies,  left  Washington  and  his  Conti- 
nentals victors  of  a  new  world,  where  the  consent  of  the 
governed  would  be  the  foundation  of  law. 

We  have  made  our  review  of  men  and  leaders  and  the 
causes  in  which  they  served,  contended  for,  and  in  which 
many  of  them  fell — the  reforms  and  revolutions  which  they 
anticipated  and  struggled  for,  and  which  the  best  and 
strongest  of  them  accomplished — that  we  may  place  these 
great  leaders  of  men,  their  causes,  beliefs,  and  movements, 
all  of  them  in  combination,  and,  as  we  can,  each  one's  work 
and  thought  in  particular,  alongside  of  our  own  world 
leader.  This  great  leader  and  prophet,  the  man  of  his 
time,  was  Abraham  Lincoln,  whom  God,  in  his  wisdom, 
raised  up  among  the  people,  that  he  might  save  our  be- 
loved country  in  patience  and  sacrifice,  purge  and  cleanse 
it  from  the  iniquity  of  a  slavery  that  made  the  black  man 
a  brute  and  the  white  man  the  competitor  of  the  black 
man's  stolen  labor,  under  which  the  white  man  often  had 
much  less  to  subsist  upon  than  the  well-fed  slave,  to  em- 
phasize the  degradation  of  this  curse  that  fell  so  heavy 
on  toiling  millions. 

God  proved  him  constant  and  true  to  the  end,  as  well 
as  powerful  and  wise  in  his  high  command,  through  the 
fiery  trial  that  made  him  a  sacrifice  like  Moses,  Savonarola, 
and  William  of  Orange,  when  his  great  work  was  done. 

It  is  by  incisive  investigation,  contrast,  and  comparison 
that  we  gather  notions  of  men,  their  objects,  principles, 
and  purposes,  and  the  measures  which  they  contend  for 
and  hazard  every  danger  to  accomplish.  The  world's  lead- 
ers whom  we  have  brought  forth  for  consideration  were 
all.  in  their  time,  self-sustained,  able,  strong,  and  powerful 
3 


34  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

men,  capable,  daring,  and  fearless  in  the  work  of  their  lives. 
They  were  not  all  alike — far  from  it! — ^yet  there  were 
strong,  forcible,  and  similar  lines  of  character,  which  were 
distinct  and  clear  in  the  lives  of  all  of  them.  All  of  them 
were  strong,  clear-minded  men.  All  of  them  believed  in 
their  people,  lived  plain  and  simple  lives  with  and  among 
them,  so  always  until  they  came  to  and  possessed  their 
leadership.  Not  all  were  faithful  in  this  to  the  end;  but 
it  came  that  all  who  forsook  their  people,  and  were  faith- 
less, or  those  who  exalted  themselves,  waned,  or  lost  their 
leadership,  and  their  kingdoms  or  nations  passed  into  other 
hands,  like  those  of  Philip,  Alexander,  and  Csesar;  but 
those  who  remained  faithful,  who  served  their  cause  and 
people  triumphantly  to  the  end — like  Moses,  Savonarola, 
Luther,  Bruce,  Hampden,  Cromwell,  and  Washington,  were 
honored  leaders  throughout  their  lives. 

It  is  by  investigation  and  comparison  with  men  and 
leaders  like  these  that  we  are  to  establish  Lincoln  in  his 
appropriate  place  among  his  own — our  people — and  in  his- 
tory. He  was  not  superior  in  mind  or  strength  or  cause  or 
achievement  to  all,  or  in  every  element  and  feature  to  any 
of  these  world  leaders  among  men.  He  liberated  more  black 
bondmen  than  the  entire  Hebrew  race  at  the  time  of  their 
deliverance,  and  from  a  more  grinding  bondage,  and  emanci- 
pated also  our  more  than  thirty  millions  of  white  people  from 
its  cursed  effect  at  the  time.  His  work  consolidated,  re- 
strengthened,  and  advanced  to  almost  certain  power  a 
greater,  stronger,  and  better  nation  than  Eome  before  there 
was  a  sign  or  suspicion  of  its  decay. 

He  achieved  greater  success  in  a  more  desperately-con- 
tested struggle,  and  brought  into  effectual  existence  a  greater 
reform,  than  Cromwell.  In  patience,  longsuffering,  and 
faithful  service  to  the  end  he  can  well  be  compared  with 
Washington.  He  fought  for  all  that  Washington  did,  and 
waited,  served,  and  prayed  for  all  that  his  great  soul  de- 


THE  MEN  OE  HIS  TIME.  35 

sired.  He  contended  and  pleaded  and  directed  among 
thirty-two  millions  against  Washington's  three  or  four  mil- 
lions. Washington  fought  England  directly.  Lincoln 
fought  the  slave  hierarchy  and  England  indirectly.  He 
was  not  greater  than  Washington — mortal  man  never  has 
been — but  the  parallels  draw  between  them  so  close  and 
regularly  that  we  rejoice  in  the  truth  that,  under  the  Wise 
Euler  of  all,  and  with  a  free  people,  one  of  them  founded 
and  the  other  saved  our  oSTation. 

Lincoln  fought  and  contended  for  man's  spiritual  free- 
dom and  independence,  as  well  as  that  he  should  be  free  in 
civil  and  domestic  affairs;  and  though  not  comparable,  in 
many  ways,  to  Savonarola  and  Luther  as  the  world's  load- 
ers in  behalf  of  religious  liberty,  yet  in  their  noble  and 
never-to-be-forgotten  service  in  behalf  of  our  race  they 
did  not  achieve  any  victory  for  man's  spiritual  freedom  that 
Lincoln's  great  work  did  not  affirm,  more  surely  establish, 
and  more  generally  disseminate. 

So,  without  unsupported  pretension,  and  in  the  full  light 
of  persevering  research,  measured  by  the  highest  standards 
and  parallels  which  have  weighed  and  estimated  the  world's 
greatest  and  most  gifted  leaders  and  their  causes,  beliefs, 
and  achievements,  Lincoln  stands  a  worthy  successor  of 
Washington,  one  of  the  world's  hero  leaders,  and  the  man 
of  his  time. 


CHAPTER  11. 

II y  ixTLE  ABE,"  son  of  Thomas  Lincoln,  of  Kentucky, 
I  the  farmer  boy,  the  thoughtful,  studious  lad  who  came 
to  the  heavy  forests  lands  of  Southern  Indiana  from 
his  Kentucky  home  when  a  child,  grew  to  manhood,  where 
severe,  honest  toil  was  everybody's  continuing  occupation. 
In  his  sixteenth  year  he  had  reached  a  development  that 
made  him  equal  in  strength,  general  usefulness,  and  ca- 
pacity' to  full-grown  men.  He  had  menial  equipment,  in- 
quisitiveness,  and  ingenuity  so  distinct  in  his  character  and 
make-up,  that  he  grew  to  be  considered  a  man  in  his  boy- 
hood, and  long  before  he  reached  mature  age  he  became 
known  as  'Tionest  Old  Abe."  This  epithet  was  a  tribute 
to  his  integrity,  remarkable  insight,  and  knowledge  of  cur- 
rent events,  rather  than  to  his  years. 

He  grew  up  through  the  toil  and  hardships,  common 
and  usual  to  the  people  about  him,  which  were  necessary 
in  changing  the  forest  wilderness  and  the  vast  alluvial 
plains  into  tilled  farms,  with  comfortable  homes  and  habi- 
tations. In  his  progress  he  was,  first  of  all,  a  persevering 
student  of  events  and  men;  and  then  of  books;  of  the  latter 
he  read  all  within  his  reach  which  he  could  either  buy  or 
borrow.  In  the  world's  work  after  farming,  lumbering, 
and  boating,  and  his  little  country  store,  he  came  to  be 
a  surveyor,  a  tireless  and  diligent  law  student,  lawyer,  in 
which  relation  he  became  and  held  the  place  of  the  people's 
counselor;  rising  steadily  he  became  political  disputant 
with  the  most  learned  "doctors  of  the  law:"  Commoner  in 
which  the  people  ''all  took  to  him,"  and  leader,  an  exalted 

36 


THE  MES  OF  HIS  TIME.  37 

position  where  he  had  no  successful  contestant  Xot 
through  seeking  oflSce  or  distinction,  but  because  of  Ms 
knowledge  of  men  and  affairs,  and  the  laws  of  the  land, 
his  proved  integrity  of  character,  his  masterly  and  com- 
manding ability  in  every  encounter  or  emergency,  and  his 
constant,  unflinching  adherence  to  the  cause  of  the  rights 
of  his  fellow-men,  he  rose  in  worthy  and  permanent  dis- 
tinction to  be  his  people's  adviser  and  leader.  President, 
elected  and  re-elected;  but,  most  of  all,  man  and  leader  of 
his  people,  a  prophet,  whom  God  touched  with  the  fire  of  a 
new  inspiration- 
He  was  one  into  whose  soul  was  burned  the  hope  that, 
like  Moses,  who  was  God's  messenger  and  avenger  to  de- 
liver his  people  from  grasping  and  cruel  bondage,  he  was 
to  be  the  leader  of  a  greater  people  from  a  wokc  and  more 
galling  bondage,  one  that  brutalized  the  black  man,  who, 
body  and  being,  became  the  booty  and  plunder  of  pirate, 
buccaneer,  and  slave-trader.  This  system  and  sin  of  slavery 
debased  and  dishonored  the  citizen  of  any  part  of  the  Xa- 
tion,  who  honestly  earned  his  living,  and  for  whose  liberty, 
haopiness,  and  c-omfort  the  Xation  was  founded.  Every- 
where the  toiler,  laborer,  and  artisan  were  confronted  with 
the  competition  of  the  black  man's  stolen  labor.  An  aris- 
tocracy was  founded  on  the  ownerehip  of  stolen  men  and 
women,  and  the  pretentious  arrogance  and  studied  insolence 
of  a  petty  prince  or  a  titled  aristocrat  were  not  worse  than 
the  offensive  intolerance  of  most  of  these  traffickers  in 
human  flesh. 

The  labor  of  four  million  slaves  whose  every  day's  toil 
produced  vast  quantities  of  materials,  such  as  com,  sugar. 
rice,  and  cotton,  were  aU  taken  from  the  producers  without 
remuneration,  and  placed  in  our  own  and  the  world's  market 
in  direct  competition  with  our  own  products,  making  us 
the  competitors  of  stolen  and  unpaid  labor.  Citizen  and 
Xation  were  tied  down  under  the  dominion  and  curse  of 


38  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

slavery,  righteously  judged  and  written,  centuries  ago,  as 
"the  foundation  and  sum  of  all  villainies." 

Without  an  overdrawn  comparison,  but  in  reason,  in  a 
plain  and  sensible  consideration  of  the  most  important 
events,  upheavals,  and  progress  in  the  history  of  peoples 
and  their  leaders,  it  seems  as  true  and  certain  that  Lincoln 
was  touched  with  the  fire  of  God's  Spirit,  and  made  a  leader 
of  our  people,  as  that  we  have  and  acknowledge  God  in 
history.  Thus  as  a  beginning,  continuing,  and  prevailing 
consideration,  Lincoln  became  the  chosen  leader  of  a  people 
who  loved  liberty  and  hated  oppression.  They  followed  him 
as  faithfully,  and  served  him  and  the  Great  Master  as  well 
as  the  favored  Hebrew  people  did  Moses,  or  the  fearless 
Germanic  race  did  Luther  in  the  mighty  contest  for  relig- 
ious liberty.  John  Knox,  with  his  devoted  covenanters  in 
Scotland,  and  Cromwell,  with  his  conscientious  warrior  puri- 
tans in  England,  were  great  leaders  for  the  overthrow  of 
an  oppressive  dynasty,  and  Washington  rose  to  uncontested 
leadership  in  one  of  the  most  memorable  conflicts  the  world 
has  ever  known. 

Our  subject  is  Lincoln  and  the  men  of  his  time.  The 
name  brings  bright,  pleasing  memories,  as  the  thought  of 
the  hurrying,  disputing,  assembling  throngs  brings  back  the 
fiery,  fateful  events,  though  carrying  us  into  and  through 
such  woeful,  destructive  conflict  as  seldom  rages  on  this 
war-laden  earth.  Though  these  reflections  often  bring  sad 
and  movirnful  reviews,  they  affirm  the  bettered,  rebuilded 
Nation,  purged  of  grosser  wrongs  and  bloody  sectional  di- 
visions. Patriotism  to-day  is  as  deep  and  sincere  as  our 
country,  its  States  and  jurisdictions,  are  wide-spreading  and 
satisfying.  Lincoln's  name  is  so  pleasantly  and  delightfully 
interwoven  with  surprising  history,  and  so  distinct  as  one 
of  the  greatest  leaders  and  reformers  of  all  time,  that  it 
vnll  brighten  as  the  ISTation  waxes  strong  through  lengthen- 
ing periods  of  peaceful  progress.     His  name,  so  dear  and 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  39 

suggestive  of  liberty,  justice,  and  freedom,  will  be  remem- 
bered among  the  five  or  six  of  those  whose  work  marks 
world-achieving  epochs  in  human  history. 

It  was  a  high  privilege  and  a  lasting  honor,  though  a 
severe  and  exacting  service,  to  have  been  one  of  those  who 
marched  forward  to  more  honest  methods  of  civil  adminis- 
tration and  more  consideration  for  the  rights  and  welfare 
of  the  weaker  and  more  helpless,  and  to  have  followed  the 
bold  and  fearless  spirit  of  Lincoln  through  trials,  tribula- 
tion, bitter  anguish,  and  battle  to  final  victory.  In  memory 
it  is  satisfying  to  have  looked  into  his  great  and  beautiful 
soul,  and  to  have  been  in  its  presence  and  under  his  happy 
and  exalting  influence,  and  to  have  been,  for  a  time,  as  near 
as  souls  in  kindred  feeling  and  purpose  can  be,  a  part  of  his 
noble  nature  and  its  purposes. 

The  stor}^  of  the  life  and  work  of  Abraham  Lincoln  and 
the  men  with  and  about  him  forms  one  of  the  most  pleas- 
ing and  entertaining  subjects,  and  at  the  same  time  it 
covers  one  of  the  most  exciting,  heroic,  and  tragic  periods 
of  our  own  and  of  all  the  world's  history.  In  it  we  follow 
the  apparently  melancholy,  certainly  the  serious  and 
thoughtful  man,  one  of  the  brightest  creations  of  intellec- 
tual genius  whose  talents  were  so  brilliant,  impressive,  and 
predominant,  that  the  light  from  them  and  the  integrity 
of  his  character  and  purposes  are  brighter,  clearer,  better 
understood,  and  approved  as  the  years  roll  on.  After  all,  he 
was  one  of  the  people,  a  plain  common  man,  a  citizen  re- 
spected and  beloved  of  his  friends  and  neighbors,  the  weakest 
man's  truest  friend  in  every  trial  and  perplexity. 

He  was  courageous,  capable,  and  fearless,  so  well-rounded 
out  in  power,  strength,  sympathy,  and  readiness  for  action, 
so  keenly  alive  and  active  in  the  help  of  his  fellow-men  and 
their  jeopardized  liberties,  so  singly  devoted  to  his  country 
and  people,  that  the  world  has  not  seen  another  like  him. 
Men  have  lived,  served,  and  suffered  and  died  for  land  and 


40  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

liberty,  but  who  of  them  all  was  so  distinctly  one  of  the 
plain  common  people,  so  honestly  and  sincerely  devoted  to 
their  prosperity  and  welfare,  who  left  unquestionable  proof 
of  it  in  such  wealth  of  human  sympathy  and  goodness  that 
remains  a  heritage  beyond  value  to  the  increasing  millions 
who  make  this  land  of  liberty  their  home?  Men  have  been 
able  in  counsel,  wise  in  judgment,  successful  in  war,  far- 
seeing  and  competent  in  administration;  but  who  of  the 
many  who  have  reached  some  kind  of  success,  or  the  few  who 
were  concerned  for  the  rights  of  their  fellow-men,  has  left 
the  memory  of  so  unselfish  a  life,  so  entirely  devoted  to 
them  and  the  integrity  and  entirety  of  the  saved  Nation 
that  so  well  protected  them?  Who,  and  when,  and  where  did 
man,  leader  or  ruler,  before  or  since,  use  such  mighty  re- 
sources with  such  tremendous  power  and  effect,  so  wisely, 
so  Avell,  and  so  satisfactorily  for  his  people  and  Nation? 

His  truly  great  and  masterly  work  of  liberating  a  race  of 
men  from  bondage  and  the  salvation  of  his  beloved  country 
stands  alone.  The  great  Master  doubtless  will,  in  the  fullness 
of  time,  when  his  faithful  followers  are  ready,  raise  up  an- 
other leader,  for  another  advance  of  mankind  out  of  the  pits 
of  oppressors  and  taskmasters;  but  until  then  the  story  of 
Lincoln's  life  and  leadership,  truly  told,  is  the  best  hope  of 
men  now,  as  it  was  the  anchor  of  safety  for  his  race  and 
country  when  he  lived  and  led.  It  is  ours  to  get  ready  and 
be  ready,  strengthen  the  foundations  of  our  system  of  Gov- 
ernment, to  inquire  as  Lincoln  did  and  work  as  he  did, 
taking  the  side  of  the  people  that  are  under  the  worst  form 
of  oppression.  If  we  do,  we  will  be  ready  as  he  was  for  a 
lifetime's  labor,  and  we  will  soon  be  ready  for  another 
advance;  for  the  oppressors  are  not  all  dead,  nor  the  people 
all  free. 

He  was  the  avowed  and  sincere  friend  of  the  people,  to 
whom  he  belonged.  He  was  pleased  to  be  known  and  called 
one  of  them;  in  his  lifetime  service  for  the  poor  and  op- 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  41 

pressed,  he  desired  no  higher  distinction  than  to  he  so 
known.  He  was,  of  course,  the  friend  of  the  black  man, 
and  led  our  Nation  and  people  in  a  death-struggle  for  his 
freedom,  and  through  it,  when  he  well  knew  that  the  highest 
distinction  that  wealth  and  power  could  give  was  open  to  him 
if  he  would  "take  time,"  if  he  would  only  become  lukewarm 
and  faithless,  and  abandon  their  cause.  He  was  no  less  the 
friend  of  the  poor,  weak,  and  oppressed — of  every  race,  color, 
creed,  or  condition,  and  was  always  against  wealth,  class, 
power,  or  prerogative,  in  their  oppressions,  assaults,  and 
encroachments  on  the  earnings,  rights,  privileges,  and  liber- 
ties of  men.  Next  to  his  devotion  to  his  Maker,  his  service 
in  their  behalf  was  his  most  sacred  duty. 

His  faith  in  the  common  people  was  strong,  abiding,  and 
unbounded.  He  fully  believed  tbat  in  spite  of  thwarted 
and  broken  hopes,  delayed  and  unfulfilled  expectations,  de- 
lusions, deceits,  and  follies,  they  would  finally  master  and 
decide  all  questions  justly  and  righteously.  One  of  his  most 
apt  and  forcible  maxims  was,  "You  may  fool  all  of  the  people 
part  of  the  time;  you  may  fool  part  of  the  people  all  of  the 
time;  but  you  can  not  fool  all  of  the  people  all  of  the  time." 

It  will  be  one  of  the  principal  objects  of  this  work  to 
help  place  Mr.  Lincoln  in  his  true  relation  to  the  human 
race,  commoner  or  leader  of  the  plain  common  people,  as  he 
liked  to  be  known ;  reformer,  fearless  leader,  that  defied  every 
power  on  earth  when  convinced  that  he  was  right;  and  the 
counselor,  helper,  and  defender  of  the  poor  and  lowly  under 
all  circumstances.  There  have  been  as  many  as  twenty 
entertaining  books,  lives  or  histories  of  Mr.  Lincoln;  hun- 
dreds of  pamphlets,  essays,  personal  recollections,  opinions, 
letters,  and  valuable  contributions  of  various  kinds,  pub- 
lished and  written  concerning  him.  All  of  them  are  differ- 
ent, many  of  them  widely  so;  and  they  differ,  as  the  writers 
themselves,  in  capacity,  knowledge  of  the  man,  or  want  of 
it  and  opportunity.     Some  of  them  have  been  written  with 


42  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

the  purpose  of  adjusting  him  to  the  ideas  of  the  writers, 
careless,  ahiiost  regardless  of  the  facts  that  underlie  his 
character  and  wonderful  career.  All  of  these  many  books 
and  contributions  are  useful  and  beneficial,  mainl}-  because 
most  of  the  writers  about  this  pure-minded  man  have  been, 
in  their  leading  desires,  of  one  mind  in  trying  to  place  his 
beliefs,  acts,  and  deeds,  his  fears  and  ambitious  hopes,  before 
the  world  in  the  most  pleasing  and  imperishable  form. 
Another  thousand  may  still  be  added,  and  contribute  much 
of  what  is  necessary  to  complete  the  full,  rounded-out  his- 
tory of  this  best  friend  of  downtrodden  men  since  Calvary. 
The  work,  if  it  is  done  wisely  and  well,  will  further  illustrate 
the  life-work  and  exalt  the  character  of  one  of  the  keenest, 
most  penetrating,  and  best  balanced  intellects,  and  one  of 
the  kindest,  most  symapthetic  hearts  that  ever  existed. 
ifiTarrations  and  contributions  about  Lincoln,  if  truthfully 
given,  can  not  be  overdone,  for  if  the  story  be  true  and  in 
form  to  be  understood,  it  will  in  some  way  add  to  the 
knowledge  of  the  delightful,  God-imaged  man  and  remem- 
brance of  his  tireless  life's  work,  devotion,  and  sacrifice  for 
the  relief  and  welfare  of  all  men. 

The  incidents  of  his  ancestry,  birth,  youth,  coming  to 
early  manhood,  and  activity,  and  the  events  in  the  course 
of  his  not  very  long  public  life  have  been  so  carefully  gath- 
ered, assorted,  and  published  in  the  various  comprehensive 
works,  and  the  smaller,  no  less  valuable  contributions,  that 
little  of  fact  remains  to  be  told.  There  remains  in  the 
facts  and  the  movements  that  made  them,  in  the  rushing  of 
furious,  culminating,  and  concluding  events,  in  the  relation 
of  surprising,  wonderful  happenings,  in  the  marvelous  rise 
and  progress  of  this  plain,  powerful,  unpretending  man. 
in  the  spirit  and  inspiration  as  he  advanced  in  strength. 
that  made,  moved,  and  upheld  him,  more  to  be  said  than 
has  yet  been  narrated  of  him. 

With  a  field  for  research  and  development  concerning 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  43 

human  action,  the  springs  that  advance  and  the  greed  that 
holds  down  and  retards  progress,  and  a  revelation  of  God's 
ways  in  dealing  with  men  and  their  leaders  that  is  full  of 
interest,  grandeur,  and  sublimity,  so  full  of  undeveloped 
good  for  men,  high,  undeviating  purposes,  unshaken  patriot- 
ism and  devotion,  it  becomes  a  task  that  will  take  the  learn- 
ing, talent,  persevering  labor  and  enterprise  of  the  best  we 
have  in  all  the  land  to  rebuild,  reclothe,  and  reveal  Lincoln. 
His  ancestry,  training,  development,  the  people  about  him, 
the  questions  of  his  time,  and  the  men  who  labored  with 
him  and  in  many  ways  became  part  of  the  movement,  what 
we  know  of  this  remarkable  man  and  his  work,  of  those  who 
helped  and  those  who  hindered,  especially  of  those  who  were 
steadfast  and  faithful  to  the  end,  are  all  subjects  of  present 
and  increasing  interest  to  our  people,  and  deserve  investi- 
gation, a  truthful  record,  and  deliberate  consideration. 

Up  to  the  time  of  the  upheaval  and  party  disruptions 
growing  out  of  what  were  called  "the  Compromise  Measures 
of  1850,"  to  1853-54,  his  progress  to  manhood  and  the  plain, 
simple  occurring  events  in  his  life  were  not  much  different 
from,  but  much  alike  in  a  general  way,  those  of  his  friends 
and  associates  who  grew  to  manhood  and  their  life's  work 
with  him.  He  became  a  leader  in  a  natural,  easy  way,  without 
any  unusual  desire  or  devising  on  his  part  to  be  one,  in  as 
easy,  unnoticeable,  and  ordinary  course  of  events  as  a  kind, 
worthy  father  becomes  the  leader  and  representative 
of  his  family.  He  was  conspicuous  as  one  of  the  foremost 
in  every  undertakng  he  engaged  in  while  young,  so  that 
when  he  came  to  early  manhood  he  seemed  so  well  fitted  for 
it  that  to  lead  in  all  things  in  which  he  had  concern  came 
to  be  a  part  of  his  duty  b}'  common  consent. 

Illinois  was,  from  the  time  of  its  admission  into  the 
Union  in  1818,  a  reliably  Democratic  State.  Not  until  after 
the  slavery-extending  compromises  of  1850  had  brought  a 
widespread  revolt  in  the  Democratic  Party  was  it  consid- 


44  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

ered  worth  while  for  the  Whig  Party,  of  which  Mr.  Lin- 
coln was  a  leader,  or  any  one,  to  make  a  contest  with  hope 
of  success.  As  a  consequence  of  this  party  relation  in  the 
State  for  a  full  generation  and  the  efficient  and  influential 
Democratic  organization,  a  preponderance  of  the  ablest 
and  brightest  men  belonged  to  that  party;  but  the  slavery 
propaganda,  in  its  overreaching  demands,  disrupted  the 
party  nowhere  more  completely  than  in  the  Democratic 
State  of  Illinois,  the  home  of  Mr.  Lincoln.  A  large  number 
of  Democratic  leaders  and  thousands  of  Democrats,  trained 
under  Jackson,  Benton,  and  Douglas,  after  the  slavery  di- 
vision became  ardent  supporters  of  Lincoln,  and  remained 
faithful  and  true  to  him,  influenced  in  no  small  way  by 
his  well-known  high  character  among  them  as  a  neighbor 
and  fellow-citizen  and  their  confidence  in  him  as  an  honest 
man  as  well  as  a  successful  party  leader,  although  his  party 
had  been  a  minority  one  in  the  State. 

His  ancestry  came  from  the  sturdy  yeomanry  of  the 
middle  English  counties,  Puritans  who  followed  Cromwell. 
Later  some  of  them  joined  the  society  of  Quakers,  many 
of  them  becoming  emigrants  and  fugitives  from  king  and 
kingdom,  leaving  England  along  with  other  conscientious 
persons,  sects,  and  societies,  enduring  without  complaint 
all  the  labors,  privations,  hardships,  and  sufferings  met  with 
in  settling  and  subduing  a  new  continent,  which  was  free 
from  the  tyrannies  of  Europe  because  it  was  an  uninhabited 
wilderness,  except  by  its  savage  Indians. 

These  men — the  best  of  the  lands  which  they  left — had 
less  fear  of  all  that  was  in  the  wild  forests  than  of  the 
little,  cruel-minded,  titled  lords  and  usurping  kings  who, 
in  some  way  or  other,  constantly  robbed  them  of  their  earn- 
ings, and  carried  on  war  against  them,  or  some  arbitrary 
suppression  of  their  rights.  They  were  willing  and  anxious 
to  leave  their  homes,  with  all  the  attachments  which  cen- 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  46 

turies  had  endeared  to  them,  if  in  doing  so  they  could 
surely  and  certainly  be  free.  They  were  willing  to  encounter 
the  primeval  forests,  the  unknown  soil  and  climate,  and 
the  savage  Ked  Man,  pray  with  and  instruct  him,  and,  in 
defense  of  their  homes,  if  necessary,  contend  with  him  in 
battle,  and  risk  their  lives  and  those  of  all  their  people  in 
the  conflict.  They  met  all  these  perils,  came  over  in  sailing 
ships  which  took  weeks  to  cross  the  ocean  in  tedious,  long, 
and  tempestuous  voyages.  They  struggled,  fought,  and 
peacefully  contended  with  the  savages  as  long  as  they  could, 
avoiding  strife  and  war  with  them  whenever  it  was  pos- 
sible. They  toiled  and  worked,  tilled  and  cultivated,  and 
experimented  with  >the  new  soil  in  a  less-understood  cli- 
mate for  the  best  and  readiest  means  of  subsistence.  They 
were  a  people  who  had  to  earn  their  living  in  the  good  old 
way  of  tilling  the  soil  and  raising  their  herds,  by  a  peaceful 
husbandry  that  afforded  every  one  an  occupation. 

They  endured  and  enjoyed  these  in  fuller  detail,  with 
patience,  fortitude,  and  industry  unequaled  at  the  time 
in  the  settlement  of  any  new  country.  They  had  persever- 
ance, determination,  and  courage  equal  to  any  emergency — 
qualities  which  they  not  only  espoused  and  professed,  but 
which  they  bravely  and  faithfully  kept,  that  they  might 
worship  God  and  govern  themselves  as  they  chose.  These 
conscience-driven  emigrants,  who  came  over  in  such  vast 
colonies  in  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries,  were 
the  best  of  men — sturdy,  rugged,  honest,  and  industrious 
people,  who,  with  their  ancestors,  for  centuries  had  en- 
dured, before  landing  on  this  continent,  the  most  merci- 
less oppressions  and  persecutions  that  the  world  had  known 
in  modern  times. 

The  Puritan  and  Quaker  people  who  came  to  the  Colo- 
nies, along  with  Covenanters  and  Presbyterians  from  Scot- 
land, Dissenters,  Huguenots,  Lutherans,  and  others,  from 


46  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

England,  Germany,  France,  and  the  Low  Countries — all 
free,  independent  religious  sects  where  they  could  be— did 
a  great  and  lasting  work  for  humanity.  As  these  did  so 
much  for  freedom  in  iSTew  England,  New  York,  New  Jersey, 
and  Pennsylvania,  the  Eoman  Catholics  did  as  much  in 
Maryland,  Delaware,  and  elsewhere.  Thus  all  these  dif- 
fering religious  bodies  united  in  organizing  Church,  civil, 
and  public  affairs  on  the  firm  basis  of  civil  and  religious 
liberty. 

The  Quaker  people  were  a  majority  of  the  colony  of 
Pennsylvania  in  its  early  settlement.  Owing  to  the  inde- 
fatigable and  persevering  labor  of  their  unselfish  leader, 
William  Penn,  they  were  so  strong  in  the  colony  that  their 
ideas  of  religious  liberty,  social  order,  and  the  equality  of 
all  men  before  the  law,  made  the  enduring  foundation  on 
which  the  colony  and  State  have  grown  and  prospered. 
It  is  true  that  their  leader,  Penn,  had  favor  with  the  Crown, 
and  had  opportunities  possessed  but  by  few  in  his  work, 
that  he  could  easily  have  made  himself  master  of  a  terri- 
tory as  great  and  with  natural  resources  as  valuable  and 
inexhaustible  as  those  of  England;  but  he  and  his  co-labor- 
ers did  so  well  and  wisel}'',  were  so  humane,  patriotic,  and 
unselfish  in  founding  the  colony,  distributing  the  lands, 
which  were  an  individual  grant  to  Penn,  with  no  franchises 
or  rights  reserved  or  given  to  any  class,  that  the  founder 
and,  in  the  beginning,  the  owner  in  fee  from  the  Crown, 
who  generously  added  to  this  wide  domain  his  own  for- 
tune, died  poor,  almost  penniless. 

In  the  founding  of  a  great  commonwealth  on  the  broad 
basis  of  civil  and  religious  liberties  and  the  equality  of 
men  he  and  his  co-laborers  left  a  better,  more  desirable, 
lasting,  and  valuable  heritage  to  mankind  than  if  they  had 
held  and  bequeathed  this  vast  and  rapidly-multiplying  for- 
tune as  the  king  who  gave  it  fully  wished  and  expected. 
The  world  reverently  remembers  Penn  and  his  unselfish 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  47 

founding  of  a  free  colony,  while  the  king  who  gave  it  is 
almost,  and  his  counselors  are  altogether,  forgotten. 

These  Puritans,  Quakers,  and  other  bodies,  who  were 
driven  to  the  bleak,  uninhabited  land  along  the  rough  At- 
lantic coast,  and  who  came  to  the  Colonies  as  pioneers,  be- 
came industrious,  sober,  orderly  citizens.  They  made  set- 
tlements in  Jersey,  the  Carolinas,  and  Georgia,  where  they 
were  not  the  majority,  as  they  were  in  Pennsylvania;  but 
in  all  wherever  they  established  their  homes  they  imme- 
diately set  to  work  to  build  up  the  institutions  of  a  free 
and  enlightened  people.  They  contributed  in  all  ways, 
whether  in  control  or  with  others,  to  the  building  up,  sus- 
taining, forming,  and  putting  in  practical  operation  orderly 
and  industrious  systems  of  law  and  regulation  in  all  the 
communities  where  they  made  their  homes.  They  were 
believers  in  plain  and  simple  living  and  the  equality  in  law 
and  privileges  of  all  their  people,  in  strong  contrast  with 
many  settlements  in  Virginia,  Maryland,  and  Delaware,  and 
Georgia,  where  the  Divine  right  of  kings,  prerogative,  rul- 
ers, lords,  and  a  subjected  peasantry  in  some  form  made 
the  basis  on  which  the  grants,  plantations,  counties,  or 
Colonies  were  founded. 

They  were  industrious,  frugal,  thrifty,  and  persevering, 
and  set  about  the  work  of  tilling  the  soil  at  once;  and  in 
as  short  time  as  possible  every  one  of  them  who  was  able 
found  useful  employment  in  the  field,  shop,  or  household. 
They  began,  when  they  landed  on  the  stormswept  shores, 
in  the  most  practical  sort  of  way  to  build  shops,  factories, 
and  buildings  for  labor  and  its  products,  homes  and  dwell- 
ings for  themselves,  and  shelter  for  the  few  animals  they 
brought  over  the  seas,  thus  beginning  at  once  the  labor 
operations  and  the  use  of  the  resources  at  hand  for  the 
founding  of  self-supporting,  independent  communities.  In 
tilling  the  soil,  caring  for  their  flocks  and  herds,  protect- 
ing the  barter  and  commerce  of  feeble  communities,  and 


48  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

encouraging  all  that  was  possible  in  design,  art,  and  pro- 
duction of  labor,  they  made  the  great  commonwealths  of 
to-day  a  possibility. 

No  tribute  to  those  self-denying,  papal  and  monarchy- 
driven  people  would  be  complete,  however  brief  the  men- 
tion, without  recording  something  of  their  efforts  and  suc- 
cesses in  planting,  keeping  alive,  and  never  omitting  the 
establishment  of  schools,  colleges,  and  systems  of  learning 
wherever  and  whenever  they  could.  Thousands  of  them 
had  grown  up  without  the  learning  and  instruction  com- 
mon at  that  day  in  the  schools,  colleges,  and  universities 
of  Western  Europe;  but  learned  and  unlearned,  trained 
and  untrained,  all  united  in  founding  and  completing  the 
best  they  could  institutions  of  learning,  science,  and  art, 
to  train  the  minds  and  brighten  the  souls  of  men.  Many 
of  them  were  unlettered;  _ but  they  were  far-seeing  and 
magnanimous  enough  to  provide  and  care  for  education 
just  as  they  did  for  their  rights  and  liberties  in  the  systems 
which  they  were  inaugurating  and  establishing  on  this  new 
continent. 

These  ideas  and  purposes  prevailed  so  generally  that 
in  most  of  the  Colonies  they  provided  to  the  full  extent  of 
their  means  for  schools  with  endowments,  lands,  franchises, 
and  privileges. 

Belonging  to  and  part  of  these  plain,  earnest,  equal- 
right  believing,  and  devoutly  religious  people  we  find  the 
Pennsylvania  and  Virginia  branch  of  the  Lincoln  family 
from  whom  President  Lincoln  descended.  In  this  ancestry, 
under  the  careful  investigation  and  research  of  many  la- 
borious students,  we  find  the  hereditary  proclivities,  patient, 
determined  inclinations  to  the  positive  beliefs  of  the 
Quaker  people  in  general,  and  the  Lincoln  family  in  par- 
ticular, that  "all  men  are  created  free  and  equal"  before 
God,  and  that  they  should  stand  so  in  any  system  of  gov- 
ernment or  law.     This  foundation  fact  comes  truthfully 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  49 

and  logically  as  the  result  of  our  somewhat  lengthy  investi- 
gation of  the  kind  and  the  character  of  the  people  we 
have  described,  who  landed  on  this  continent  and  founded 
our  Government. 

The  Lincolns  were  strong  in  this  belief.  It  is  the  most 
important  fact  revealed  in  the  parentage  of  Mr.  Lincoln,  ■ 
and  shows  that  the  basis  of  his  character  and  future  action 
was  well  grounded  in  hun  even  before  he  was  "so  fearfully 
and  wonderfully  made."  Thus  he  grew  and  developed  to 
be  a  wise,  able,  and  strong  man,  the  representative  of  his 
people  and  their  beliefs  in  a  development,  knowledge,  and 
experience  that  made  him  a  man,  if  you  please,  who  looked 
back  over  two  centuries  passing  before  him — from  William 
of  Orange,  Hampden,  Cromwell,  and  Washington — at  the 
guilt  and  wickedness  of  kings  and  princes  and  their  abet- 
tors, resolved  that  wherever  God  led  him  he  would  strike 
them  and  their  cursed  oppressions. 

His  immediate  ancestors  emigrated  from  Pennsylvania 
to  Virginia,  and,  in  time,  with  Daniel  Boone  and  several  other 
daring  pioneers,  they  crossed  the  mountains  into  what  was 
then  the  forests  and  the  wild,  unknown  region  of  Ken- 
tucky, about  1770.  The  country  west  of  the  Alleghanies 
was  then  a  wide,  unexplored  wilderness.  Columbus  was  a 
strong,  courageous.  God-fearing  man  to  brave  every  danger, 
discover  a  new  world,  bring  hope  to  the  crowded  and  op- 
pressed of  every  country  in  Europe,  but  not  more  than 
such  daring,  persevering  heroes  as  Boone  and  his  few  strong- 
hearted  pioneers  who  crossed  the  mountains  with  him. 

To  the  adventurous  home-seekers — strong,  fearless 
men — of  that  time  it  was  a  land  of  promise,  a  Canaan,  a 
beautiful  green  England,  as  that  was  to  the  Norman,  with 
endless  stretches  of  forest,  valleys,  pastures,  and  wood- 
lands, with  long,  rolling  hills  in  tireless  succession,  like 
the  sea,  to  the  north  and  westward  for  hundreds  of  miles, 
to  the  great  Ohio  and  the  mighty  "Father  of  Waters,"  where 
4 


50  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

the  evening  sun  sank  in  a  continent  as  little  known  to 
them  as  those  on  the  planet  Mars  are  to-day. 

It  had  broad,  unfolding  areas  of  hill  and  valley  and  plain, 
with  springs  and  fountains  of  clear,  sparkling  water,  grow- 
ing into  rivulets,  streams,  and  rivers,  chasing  and  toss- 
ing the  water  and  spray  along  through  beautiful  green 
pastures,  as  graceful  and  pleasing  to  look  upon  as  the  mead- 
ows along  the  Severn,  the  Clyde,  and  the  Shannon,  whose 
tillage  and  civilization  were  old  a  thousand  years  ago. 

They  found  a  bountiful  land,  rich  in  its  productions, 
with  its  forests  and  woodlands  full  of.  animals  and  birds, 
and  its  streams  full  of  fish  and  water-fowl,  with  atmos- 
phere and  climate  so  well  adapted  to  their  outdoor  living 
that  they  thrived  and  grew  strong  under  exposures  and 
hardships  which  men  could  not  have  endured  in  the  open 
air  along  the  Atlantic  coast,  with  its  drenching,  chilling 
storms. 

In  a  thousand  ways  they  found  a  rich,  comely,  beauti- 
ful land,  pleasing,  animating,  inviting  to  bold,  adventur- 
ous spirits,  who  found  in  its  boundless  resources  a  hunts- 
man's paradise  and  a  pioneer's  delightful  home.  They  were 
of  the  mold  and  make  of  men  such  as  the  Father  has  sent 
forward  as  the  daring  forerunners  of  commonwealths, 
States  and  nations — men  whose  fortitude  and  endurance 
were,  equal  to  every  trial  and  emergency — like  those  on 
the  "Dark  and  Bloody  Ground"  of  Kentucky,  who  attested, 
defended,  and  who,  on  their  part,  founded  the  freest  and 
best  Government  God  ever  gave  to  men. 

Boone  and  his  companions,  among  whom  were  the  Lin- 
colns,  were  beyond  doubt  "the  bravest  of  the  brave"  of 
the  men  of  the  frontier  of  that  day,  as  strong  and  powerful 
in  physical  make-up  as  they  were  brave,  daring,  and  ven- 
turesome in  spirit  and  character. 

Boone  was  a  leader  of  such  capacity,  strength  of  pur- 
pose, experience,  and  success  that  of  the  thousands  who 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  51 

pushed  forward  into  the  wilderness  to  build  new  settle- 
ments and  new  States,  many  of  whose  lives  have  been  made 
glorious  in  legend,  song,  and  story,  there  were  none  more 
ready,  capable,  and  daring  than  the  peaceful  or  warlike 
hero  who,  waking  or  sleeping,  was  always  ready  for  im- 
mediate action,  regardless  of  the  difficailties  and  dangers 
that  set  thick  about  him  and  his  little  band  in  the  many 
perils  and  contests  they  had  with  the  savage  Indians, 

Boone  was  so  skilled,  entertaining,  persuasive,  and  in- 
stantly ready  for  any  emergency  that,  when  they  cap- 
tured him  in  battle,  which  they  did  several  times,  they 
adopted  and  made  him  one  of  their  tribe.  He  always  es- 
caped at  exactly  the  best  time,  eluded  pursuits  which  other 
men  or  beasts  could  not,  and  reached  his  comrades  in  time 
for  better  defense  and  with  increased  knowledge  of  the 
strength  and  habits  of  their  foes.  He  was  so  sleepless  and 
careful  of  the  value  of  moments  that,  plunging  into  the 
deepest  forests  at  the  highest  instant  of  opportunity,  he 
was  always  alert  and  knew  precisely  where  to  go.  He  was 
a  remarkable  leader  in  many  ways,  planting  and  founding 
a  colony  of  a  few  families  among  thousands  of  hostile  foes, 
holding  and  protecting,  with  feeble  means  of  defense,  com- 
pared with  their  adversaries,  the  beautiful  land,  watered 
with  the  blood  of  His  comrades,  until  it  became  one  of  the 
first  added  to  the  galaxy  of  States  after  the  Revolution. 
He  was  wise,  and  provided  well  in  his  day  for  the  welfare 
of  the  coming  millions,  much  better  than  he  did  for  him- 
self. Under  his  care  and  protection  the  first  legislative 
assembly  ever  held  west  of  the  Alleghanies  met  in  his  little 
settlement  at  Boonesborough,  about  1790.  There  the 
people,  by  their  representatives,  enacted  the  few  simple 
laws  and  regulations  needed  for  their  well-being  and  prog- 
ress, preparing  in  sense  and  form  for  the  creation  of  local 
governments  which  would  more  effectually  protect  their 
liberties  in  organization  and  co-operation. 

IIBRARV 
"NIVERSfTY  GF  B 


52  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

In  the  settlements,  or  alone  in  the  deep  fastnesses  of 
what  was  truly  "bloody  ground/'  hotly  contested  and  fought 
for,  in  the  night  vigil  or  the  camp  and  field,  supported  or 
unsupported,  in  any  and  all  conditions,  and  at  all  times, 
he  labored  long,  patiently,  faithfully,  and  well,  that  he 
might  found  a  community  of  his  friends  and  people,  and 
leave  them  free  and  prosperous  in  its  enjoyment.  This 
much  he  and  his  compatriots  did.  He  and  some  of  these 
honest  pioneers,  among  whom  was  the  elder  Abraham  Lin- 
coln, served  the  body  of  their  people  so  unreservedly  and 
unselfishly  that  they  lost  their  own  holdings,  and  were 
pushed  farther  into  the  Western  wilderness  in  their  age 
and  infirmity. 

It  has  been  said  of  these  hardy,  strong  men,  descend- 
ants of  only  a  few  generations  from  Cromwell  and  his  fol- 
lowers, that  they  were  illiterate,  ignorant,  coarse  men,  un- 
used and  unsuited  to  the  higher  positions  and  duties  of 
citizenship,  and  that  they  were  thriftless  and  in  the  depths 
of  poverty  because  that  was  their  natural  condition.  If  all 
this  be  true,  we  should  remember  that  out  of  these  came 
the  world-renowned  Lincoln  and  thousands  of  our  best  men. 

The  reasoning  powers  of  any  moderately  well-informed 
person  should  be  equal  to  the  task  of  setting  at  rest  all 
such  fallacies.  There  is  something  in  the  ground  for  the 
subsistence  and  foundation  of  everything  that  lives  or  ex- 
ists upon  it.  A  long  line  of  able,  determined  men  and 
heroic  ancestry  has  preceded  every  real  leader  or  reformer 
whom  God  has  given  to  the  human  race.  The  few  great 
ones  whom  we  have  mentioned  were  the  children  of  cen- 
turies of  development;  and  the  three  greatest  since  me- 
diaeval and  modern  times  before  Lincoln — Luther,  Crom- 
well, and  Washington — came  from  people  and  ancestry  that 
had  fought  and  contended  for  hundreds  of  years  for  the 
light  that  would  lead  to  the  liberties  of  men. 

Boone  and  the  Lincolns  and  their  brave  followers  into 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  53 

the  forest  did  as  much  for  the  land  they  loved  and  fought 
for,  the  diadem  of  living  green  set  in  the  crystal  rocks, 
sparkling  waters,  and  rolling  valleys  of  dear  old  Kentucky. 
They  were  men  of  their  time:  brave,  fearless,  and  daring, 
equal  to  the  best  in  the  settlements  they  left  to  found  a 
colony  in  an  entirely  unknown  region.  They  were  unlet- 
tered, like  many  of  their  time,  but  they  had  virtues  of 
character  which  were  full  compensation.  They  had  in- 
tegrity, fitness,  and  constancy  that  gave  them  victory  or  a 
pioneer's  last  resting-place,  as  it  came  to  the  elder  Lincoln. 
They  had  few  books;  but  they  could  read  the  signs  in  the 
air  of  the  coming  seasons,  in  the  brooks  and  the  sands  the 
movements  of  their  almost  sleepless  foes.  In  the  firma- 
ment they  talked  with  God  through  the  stars,  like  the 
shepherds  and  prophets  on  the  hills  of  Judea,  and,  like 
them,  were  assured  that  they  had  found  the  promised  land 
after  so  many  trials  and  losses  and  sufferings  through  the 
new  wilderness.  Cromwell  wrote  clumsy,  unpolished  let- 
ters and  orders  when  he  wrote  any,  and  Washington  could 
not  have  spelled  his  way  through  a  "civil  service  examina- 
tion;" but  they  left  a  legacy  of  godlike  wisdom  to  the 
world  for  all  time. 

It  would  be  pleasant  to  leave  Boone,  the  founder  of  a 
great  central  State  with  the  thought  that,  in  our  land  of 
plenty  and  abundance,  which  his  strong  arm  and  stronger 
brain  had  done  so  much  to  build  into  prosperous,  peaceful, 
and  wealthy  communities,  that  he  succeeded  in  age  to  the 
ease,  comforts,  and  happiness  which  came  to  so  many  be- 
cause he  and  his  faithful,  unflinching  few  suffered,  gave 
life  and  limb  and  all  they  had,  and  succeeded  in  founding 
and  establishing  the  great  State.  A  very  different  fate 
befell  him,  the  same  that  came  to  William  Penn  and  many 
others  since  Moses,  who  led  the  way  in  a  lifetime  and  hard- 
ship, who  guided  communities  in  all  needful  provision  and 
preparation,  that  they  and  others  could  enjoy  it.     Boone, 


54  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

the  pioneer,  organizer,  legislator,  and  patriot,  broke  down 
under  the  load  of  his  losses,  disappointments,  and  infirmi- 
ties, and  died  in  alien  territory,  where  he  had  been  driven 
by  foreclosing  usurers,  who  fell  into  possession  of  his  beau- 
tiful Kentucky  home,  manor,  and  lands. 

In  his  old  age  he  opened  up  a  new  home,  not  far  west 
of  St,  Louis,  in  what  was  then  the  Spanish  territory  of 
Louisiana,  which  he  lost  in  very  much  the  same  way  that 
he  had  lost  his  valuable  estate  in  Kentucky.  Thus  Boone 
died  like  Penn  and  like  Moses,  looking  over  into  Canaan 
from  Pisgah,  on  the  western  side  of  the  great  Father  of 
Waters,  poorer,  with  less  of  worldly  wealth  than  when  he 
and  his  friends — the  Lincolns  and  their  faithful  few — 
started  out  to  carve  a  commonwealth  like  Kentucky,  with 
its  coming  millions,  out  of  valleys,  hills,  and  wilderness. 

Abraham  Lincoln,  the  pioneer,  the  friend,  and  associate 
of  Boone,  colaborer  with  him  and  the  little,  persevering 
band,  grandfather  of  President  Lincoln,  was  killed  while 
working  in  his  little  field,  "a  clearing"  in  Jefferson  County, 
hy  some  savage  Indians,  who  attacked  him  unexpectedly 
from  ambush  in  the  autumn  of  1786.  Thomas,  his  little 
son,  not  twelve  years  of  age,  father  of  the  future  President, 
was  left  alone  with  his  dead  father,  while  Mordecai  and 
Josiah,  elder  brothers,  ran  to  a  neighboring  stockade  for 
help.  They  arrived  in  time  to  save  the  rest  of  the  family 
and  their  little  home  from  the  flames,  but  the  head  of  the 
household  lay  cold  and  dead;  and  the  little  boy  was  made 
melancholy  for  his  lifetime  by  the  remembrance  of  his 
father's  sacrifice.  There  can  be  small  wonder  that  his 
son  was  a  sad,  thoughtful  man  throughout  his  marvelous 
career. 

Such  tragedies  were  common  in  the  early  settlement  of 
all  our  States  and  Territories,  and  later,  as  we  drove  the 
Indians  westward.  Our  blunders  and  misdirected  efforts 
to  civilize  and  deal  with  the  Indians  are  occasionally  as 


TEE  MEN  OF  lllS  TIME.  55 

flagrant,  ineffectual,  and  inhuman  now  as  they  have  been 
from  the  beginning.  We  too  long  adhered  to  a  policy  whose 
result  would  be  the  ultimate  extinction  of  the  Indians. 
It  often  led  them  to  rise  in  revolts,  to  be  as  regularly  fol- 
lowed by  exterminating  campaigns  against  them,  and  the 
sacrifice  of  as  many  pioneer  settlers  and  soldiers,  in  the  ag- 
gregate, as  there  were  Indians  to  be  gotten  off  their  lands. 

This  policy  continued,  with  enormous  losses  of  life  and 
property  and  much  interruption  of  peaceful  settlement 
and  occupation.  A  sensible  solution  of  the  whole  Indian 
question  has  been  in  practical  operation  in  the  Indian  Ter- 
ritory, where  as  many  as  half  of  the  surviving  Indians  live 
in  comparative  quiet.  The  people  in  many  new  settlements 
have  been  massacred,  and  many  bands  of  savage  and  some 
friendly  Indians  have  been  exterminated  in  the  frightful 
campaigns  which  have  obliterated  most  of  tHe  other  half. 

We  can  not  wonder  now  as  we  consider  the  Indian  ques- 
tion more  understandingly  that  these  savage  people  gave 
up  their  homes  so  reluctantly,  who  once  held  and  inhabited 
all  our  vast  domains,  Avith  the  knowledge  and  light  they 
had  to  guide  them.  They  were  brave  and  fearless  beyond 
dispute,  to  the  degree  that  torture  and  the  most  agonizing 
death  were  preferable  to  servitude  or  submission.  They 
gave  up  their  hunting-gi'ounds  and  their  beautiful  stretches 
of  valleys,  rivers,  and  plains,  of  such  indescribable  value 
to  them,  as  they  are  now  to  us,  that  no  earthly  considera- 
tion could  have  been  any  sort  of  compensation.  They  yielded 
only  when  they  were  overpowered,  or  when  a  tribe  perished. 

We  should  not  wonder  that  they  have  fought  for  their 
homes,  their  ^^agwams.  their  hunting-grounds,  the  lands 
of  their  own  bright  memories  and  the  traditional  realms  of 
a  mightier  people  than  themselves.  They  have  fought  with 
daring,  skill,  and  cunning  far  beyond  the  white  man's  cal- 
culation. When  aroused  in  defense,  they  had  the  savage 
ferocity  of  beasts;  for  this  was  all  they  knew  of  war.   Their 


56  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

homes  and  hunting-grounds  were  priceless  in  their  estima- 
tion, worth  more  to  them  than  the  lives  of  all  their  braves, 
which  would  have  been  freely  given  to  keep  them  if  a  scat- 
tering few  of  their  descendants  could  by  this  have  held  and 
occupied  them. 

To  a  superior,  overpowering  race  we  would  be  much 
the  same.  This  goodly  land  could  only  be  taken  from  us 
when  its  men  had  fallen,  and  "peace  reigned  as  in  Warsaw," 
when  its  brave  defenders  were  all  slain.  We  know  now, 
when  tho  Indian  question  is  solved,  and  only  a  few  of  all 
the  brave  thousands  are  left,  that  it  would  have  been  bet- 
ter for  us  in  many  ways,  would  have  saved  multitudes  of 
our  own  and  the  Indian  people  from  torture  and  destruc- 
tion, and  would  have  been  a  humanity  within  our  preten- 
sion and  more  to  our  credit  than  the  taking  of  their  valu- 
able lands  by  force,  to  have  brought  them  within  the  lim- 
its of  civilization  from  the  first,  as  we  do  these  days  with 
some  of  the  fragments  of  these  once  powerful  tribes  of 
the  Bed  Men,  whom  we  have  conquered  and  almost  extin- 
guished, whether  rightfully  or  not. 

Boone  and  his  followers  founded  one  of  the  great  States 
of  the  Union.  Favored  by  nature  in  climate,  resources, 
and  beauty,  it  became  and  remains  one  of  the  strongest. 
It  remains  to  be  said  that  Boone  and  his  men  were  so  un- 
selfish that  others  reaped  the  reward  of  their  labors,  and 
the  pioneers  of  Kentucky  carried  their  civilization  west- 
ward toward  the  setting  sun. 


CHAPTER  III. 

IN  a  shoal  of  disaster  and  adversity  the  family  were 
driven  from  their  home  in  the  most  productive  to  one 
of  the  most  barren  and  vinproductive  regions  of  the 
State.  It  was  a  new  county,  with  hard  and  grinding  neces- 
sity all  about  them,  where  hard,  continuous  labor  was  the 
common  lot  of  every  one.  It  had  few  of  the  comforts  and 
conveniences  which  are  so  common  now,  and  no  luxuries 
or  idle  living.  Here  Thomas  Lincoln,  father  of  the  future 
President,  settled. 

In  a  country  where  every  one  followed  some  active  in- 
dustry he  grew  up,  and  learned  the  trade  of  a  carpenter. 
He  was  one  of  the  best  axmen  in  the  clearings,  where  he 
built  cabins  for  themselves  and  some  kind  of  shelter  for 
the  few  dom.estic  animals  they  kept.  In  this  work  every 
man  was  expected  to  help.  The  most  skillful  labor  required 
was  to  make  and  hang  the  wooden  doors  with  wooden 
hinges,  to  make  sash  for  the  windows  where  they  chanced 
to  have  glass  for  them,  to  lay  the  puncheon  floors,  and 
make  kitchen  tables  and  other  articles  of  household  neces- 
sity, including  all  the  furniture  of  their  dwelling,  as  the 
manufacture  of  these  articles  elsewhere  was  a  later  achieve- 
ment. 

There  were  no  planing-mills,  turning-lathes,  nor  the 
simple  boring  and  mortising  machines.  Sawmills  were 
scarce  and  far  between  west  of  the  mountains  as  late  as 
1800.  All  kinds  of  constructive  work,  whether  of  road- 
making,  fencing,  bridging,  erecting  buildings  or  dwellings, 
and  all  kinds  of  manufactures  or  husbandry,  were  domestic 

57 


58  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

employments,  carried  on  by  hand  in  the  several  settlements 
or  colonies  with  the  best  means  at  hand. 

Thomas  Lincoln's  tools  and  accouterments  for  work 
were  heavy,  clumsy,  half -made  things  as  compared  with  the 
neatly-modeled,  finely-shaped,  and  well-made  ones  so  com- 
mon and  obtainable  everywhere  to-day.  There  has  been 
no  greater  progress  in  industry  of  any  kind  than  in  the  im- 
proved tools,  appliances,  and  equipments  for  labor  and  use 
in  the  arts,  mechanics,  and  science  of  the  century  just  ended. 
The  tools  of  his  trade  were  a  handsaw,  a  crosscut  saw  for 
two  men,  and  a  whipsaw,  with  which  one  man  tediously 
and  laboriously  sawed  out  by  hand  the  few  boards  they 
used  for  doors,  windows,  and  some  little  shelving  in  their 
dwellings,  their  tables,  closets,  bedsteads,  and  "presses," 
as  their  means  permitted;  also  for  the  construction  of  their 
wagons,  carts,  plows,  harrows,  and  such  other  articles  as 
their  agriculture  made  necessary.  Their  shingles,  clap- 
boards for  siding,  roofing,  and  some  such  lumber,  were  split 
and  rived  out  of  the  straightest-grained  trees. 

He  had,  too,  hammers,  a  few  wrought-iron  nails  made  by 
hand  by  the  blacksmith,  two  or  three  augers,  a  steel  square, 
a  compass  or  dividers,  two  or  three  smoothing  planes,  a 
broad  hewing  ax,  and  his  wood  ax,  the  best  and  most  use- 
ful implement  of  all,  the  most  generally-used  tool  of  any 
woodman,  and  the  famous,  ever-present  utensil  of  the  pio- 
neer. He  had  also  a  few  cabinet-maker's  and  cooper's  tools ; 
for  a  carpenter  had  to  be,  in  those  days,  mechanic  and  arti- 
ficer in  all  kinds  of  work  in  wood  as  the  needs  of  his  com- 
munity required. 

With  such  an  equipment  the  carpenter  took  the  trees 
from  the  stump,  built  the  houses,  barns,  fences,  and  the 
shelter  of  every  kind  for  man  and  beast  under  their  care, 
and  all  the  articles  made  of  wood  in  them.  He  made  tables, 
bedsteads,  chairs,  and  other  household  furniture  as  their 
wants  increased  and  their  means  permitted.    In  their  plain 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  59 

and  simple  way  of  living  they  were  contented,  self-support- 
ing, industrious  people,  in  better  condition  than  they  imag- 
ined, with  more  freedom  and  independence  than  is  possible 
at  present. 

The  Lincolns  were  poor.  It  was  natural  enough  and 
easily  accounted  for  that  they  were  when  we  consider  their 
pioneer  life  and  its  embarrassments,  the  melancholy  and  trag- 
ical death  of  the  father,  and  that  it  meant  for  them  what  is  so 
common,  not  only  the  bereavement  and  loss  of  the  head,  but 
a  breaking-up,  dispersion,  and  exodus  of  the  family  west- 
ward to  poorer  lands  and  a  less  inhabited  region,  where 
they  would  be  compelled  to  seek  their  several  means  of 
support.  However,  their  condition  was  not  unusual  at 
the  time.  The  worst  of  it  was  the  loss  of  the  father  and 
an  early  separation.  The  half-grown  family  by  this  af- 
fliction were  brought  face  to  face  with  the  duties  of  life 
and  the  struggle  for  existence  out  of  time,  lacking  the  ex- 
perience and  the  father's  care,  which  nothing  else  could 
supply. 

Their  condition,  severe  and  necessitous,  as  we  have  seen, 
was  no  worse  than  that  of  most  of  their  neighbors,  and  it 
was  vastly  better  than  many  of  them;  for  the  Lincolns 
were  frugal,  sober,  and  industrious  people,  who  got  along 
pretty  well  in  life,  and  who,  by  hard  work  and  economy, 
were  well  fed,  warmly  clothed  and  housed.  Their  daily 
toil  sustained,  nourished,  and  developed  men  with  strength 
and  endurance  for  any  human  undertaking,  making  them 
models  of  manhood  and  manly  excellence. 

They  lived  as  well  as  the  people  about  them  in  a  little, 
rocky,  hilly  corner  of  the  State,  where  all  were  poor,  and 
where  the  land  was  worth  little  or  nothing,  and  so  remains 
to  this  day.  The  owner  of  his  rough,  unbarked,  unhewn  log- 
cabin  home  and  "two  yoke  of  steers"  was  a  comparatively 
prosperous  man.  The  principal  resources  and  productions 
were  game,  fish,  and  stunted,  gnarly  timber,  finishing  up  with 


60  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

a  slender,  dwarfed  growth,  most  useful,  because  it  was  the 
most  abundant  and  always  salable  when  made  into  hoop- 
poles. 

There  were  narrow  valleys  along  the  streams,  where 
two  to  three  families  to  the  mile  could  have  their  little 
garden  and  truck  patches.  But  as  the  timber  was  cleared 
off,  and  the  clay  soil  washed  in  and  filled  up  these  small 
fields,  they  became  less  and  less  productive,  until  the  land 
was  soon  "worn  out."  .  And  it  remains  poorer  to-day  than 
when  it  had  the  game  and  fish  which  the  early  settlers 
found  there,  and  hunted  and  fished  for  until  they  were 
well-nigh  exterminated,  as  we  found  when  there  in  1862. 

Thomas  Lincoln  grew  to  manhood  amid  these  unpro- 
ductive hills,  almost  in  sight  of  the  broad,  alluvial  bottoms 
of  the  rich  Ohio  Valley;  but  still  his  life  and  labors,  severe 
as  they  were,  gave  him  a  well-developed  make-up  of  mind 
and  body.  He  grew  as  well  to  be  a  man  of  probity  of  char- 
acter and  good  standing  in  his  little  world  or  neighborhood, 
where,  on  reaching  his  maturity,  he  was  known  as  a  sober- 
minded,  melancholy-turned  man,  thoughtful  and  consider- 
ate far  beyond  his  years.  He  was  a  man  of  resolute  moral 
character  and  steady  temperate  habits  by  the  side  of  those 
whose  carousals,  reckless  abandon,  and  dissipations  were 
all  too  common.  These  good  qualities  descended  from  fa- 
ther to  son,  and  reached  almost  perfect  fulfillment  in  the 
full,  rounded  out,  physical  man  and  more  positive  character 
of  the  son. 

On  the  18th  of  June,  1806,  Thomas  Lincoln,  aged 
twenty-seven,  and  Nancy  Hanks,  aged  twenty-three  years, 
were  married.  They  began  their  housekeeping  in  a  small 
cabin  in  what  was  then  a  small  village,  Elizabethtown,  in 
Hardin  County.  In  1807,  a  daughter,  Sarah,  was  born. 
Their  lives  passed  along  peacefully  and  happily,  with  no 
unpleasant  or  untoward  remembrance  in  the  little  com- 
munity.    The  little  town  was  thriftless,  and  getting  worse 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  61 

as  the  lands  wore  out  and  the  timber  was  cut  away;  and 
the  game  and  fish  disappeared  before  increasing  population. 

It  came  to  a  standstill  when  it  needed  no  new  houses. 
Labor  was  plenty,  without  much  other  occupation  than 
tilling  the  soil.  Every  householder  became,  in  a  meas- 
ure, his  own  mechanic,  repaired  his  house  and  belongings, . 
which  resulted  in  uncertain  and  unsteady  employment  i'or 
the  carpenter  Lincoln.  The  town  being  finished,  so  far  as 
Lincoln's  labors  were  concerned,  with  the  increased  respon- 
sibilities of  his  family  resting  upon  him,  they  purchased 
a  small  farm  on  iSTolin's  Creek,  a  few  miles  to  the  south. 
This  was  then  in  Hardin,  but  now  in  Larue  County. 

The  tradition  in  the  neighborhood  was  that  the  farm 
contained  about  forty  acres,  with  twelve  to  fifteen  in  tillage. 
They  sold  their  holding  without  completing  the  payments, 
with  no  better  record  of  its  acreage  or  value,  which  was 
not  more  than  four  hundred  dollars. 

That  they  prospered  as  well  as  the  most  "forehanded" 
of  their  neighbors  goes  without  contradiction;  else  they 
would  not  have  been  able  to  begin  farming  on  their  own 
account  at  their  time  of  life,  even  in  so  barren  and  fruitless 
a  region  as  their  destiny  had  placed  them.  That  they  were 
able  to  make  a  first  payment,  and  had  one  or  two  horses 
and  "a  yoke  or  two  of  oxen,"  and  some  farming  implements, 
mde  as  they  may  have  been,  to  carry  on  the  farm  work,  which 
they  did  for  several  years,  is  additional  proof.  At  the  time 
of  their  marriage  their  possessions  consisted,  besides  cloth- 
ing, of  his  "kit  of  tools"  and  their  small  household  furnish- 
ings. The  latter  were  mostly  Nancy's,  that  came  to  her 
by  reason  of  the  thrifty,  careful  habits  and  customs  of  the 
German-Anglicized  Hanks  family,  who  always  started  a 
daughter  off  at  marriage  with  beds,  bedding,  and  the  com- 
mon utensils  for  industrious,  if  not  comfortable,  living. 
This  was  one  of  the  mother's  wise  provisions  after  centuries 
of  experience. 


62  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN, 

They  labored  hard  and  constantly,  and  besides  the  sub- 
sistence which  kept  them  strong  and  healthy,  they  gained 
a  little  from  year  to  year,  when,  by  the  most  careful  econ- 
omy, they  made  subsequent  payments,  which  benefited  them 
when  they  sold  their  interest.  They  had  made  what  was 
considered  a  comfortable  living  on  the  little  farm.  Their 
work  was  late  and  earl}^,  and  cheerfully  borne.  By  all  the 
traditions  and  stories  left  in  the  two  or  three  little  neigh- 
borhoods when  we  were  there  in  1862-3,  they  were  honest, 
frugal,  generous,  and  helpful  among  their  neighbors,  kind 
and  agreeable  in  the  family,  friendly,  sociable,  and  hos- 
pitable as  it  became  Kentuckians  to  be  at  all  times,  with  a 
kind-hearted  spirit  and  generosity  that  made  the  visitor  feel 
at  home,  with  the  comforts  of  the  household  and  the  confi- 
dence of  its  inmates  all  placed  at  his  convenience  and  use. 

In  this  cabin  home  on  the  Nolin's  Creek  farm,  on  the 
12th  of  February,  1809,  Abraham  Lincoln  was  born  amid 
such  plain  and  simple  surroundings  as  to  betoken,  so  far, 
another  advance  in  human  liberty  and  progress,  that  had 
such  beginnings  and  promises  of  future  strength,  prevail- 
ing power,  and  ultimate  triumph,  along  the  same  lines  as 
the  birth  in  the  lowly  manger  at  Bethlehem. 

When  Thomas  Lincoln  and  Nancy  Hanks  were  married, 
they  had  reached  full  maturity,  and  were  in  the  prime  of 
mental  and  physical  development,  trained  and  seasoned  in 
the  knowledge  and  experience  common  among  their  fel- 
low-pioneers and  early  settlers.  They  were  sound-minded, 
able-bodied,  healthy,  well-grown  people,  without  constitu- 
tional disease  or  infirmities.  They  had  sober,  temperate 
habits,  resolute  character,  and  were  as  free  and  independ- 
ent as  they  were  strong  and  healthy,  with  an  increasing 
desire  for  the  knowledge  that  was  breaking  in  on  the  world 
in  such  streams  and  floods  with  industry  that  neither  hesi- 
tated nor  shrunk  from  any  human  labor  or  undertaking, 
with  lovely,  even-tempered  dispositions. 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  63 

They  were  supplied  with  the  tools  for  his  trade,  and 
later  with  the  implements  for  their  plain  and  simple  farm- 
ing. With  the  few  utensils  and  unpretentious  furnishings 
for  their  little  household  they  were  as  well  prepared  for 
the  duties,  trials,  and  struggles  of  life  as  any  of  the  people 
among  whom  they  lived,  or,  for  comparison,  relatively  as 
well  prepared  for  life  and  its  duties  as  the  great  body  of 
the  people  of  our  land  to-day,  and  certainly  more  free  of 
the  cursed  combinations  of  wealth,  except  the  sin  and  abomi- 
nation of  human  slavery. 

The  strong,  leading  fact  should  never  be  forgotten  nor 
beclouded  that  the  Lincolns  belonged  to  and  were  of  the 
common  people,  from  whom  all  the  reform  leaders  in  the 
cause  of  human  liberty  have  sprung  and  become  a  part  of 
in  the  struggles  that  have  advanced  and  bettered  the  con- 
ditions of  our  race.  They  were  always  content  and  satis- 
fied with  their  relation  among  their  neighbors. 

President  Lincoln  was  faithful  to  his  lineage  and  the 
traditions  of  his  people.  He  was  always  pleased  in  being 
known  as  one  of  them,  familiar  with  their  lives,  their  fears, 
their  hopes,  and  their  ambitions;  and  all  through  his  won- 
derful career,  when  little  known,  or  when  distinguished  as 
but  one  other  man  has  ever  been  in  our  country,  he  never 
broke  faith  nor  parted  "v<^ith  them. 

N"ancy  Hanks,  the  wife,  was  a  healthy,  pleasant-appear- 
ing, confiding,  shapely-fashioned,  if  not  a  handsome  woman. 
She  had  more  than  an  ordinary  education  and  knowledge 
of  affairs  for  her  time.  She  could  '^read,  write,  and  cipher," 
and  along  with  her  cares  and  increasing  responsibilities 
taught  her  husband  these  rudiments,  and  prospered  him 
in  many  ways,  helping  him  as  she  could  to  be  as  "well-read" 
and  as  well  fitted  for  the  business  of  life  before  them  as 
any  of  his  neighbors. 

By  all  who  knew  her,  as  story  and  tradition  run,  she 
was   "handy,"  bright,   intelligent,   and   entertaining.      She 


64  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

had  pleasing  and  engaging  manners,  making  every  one  about 
her  comfortable  and  at  ease.  Best  of  all,  for  the  growth 
and  well-being  of  her  melancholy  boy,  she  had  a  kind  and 
even  temper  of  mind,  an  affectionate  disposition,  and  a 
courageous  and  hopeful  devotion  to  her  life-work  in  her 
household  and  little  community. 

In  these  traditional  memories,  which  formed  so  impor- 
tant a  part  of  the  little  neighborhood,  it  was  an  easy  and 
agreeable  discovery  to  find  the  sources  of  "Abe  Lincoln's 
determined  spirit,"  high  and  noble  character,  and  his  mar- 
velous physical  powers.  His  parents  had  these,  which  they 
transmitted  to  him;  and  he,  with  such  fine  combination  of 
spirit,  character,  and  strength,  developed  and  further 
builded,  making  himself  capable  of  the  leadership  God  de- 
signed him  for,  which  he  as  surely  became  as  that  man  was 
ever  inspired  and  clothed  with  his  authority.  He  had  a 
wise,  good  mother,  a  plain-minded,  hard-working,  honest 
father.    They  gave  him  a  strong,  healthy  body. 

His  father's  toiling,  laborious  life  was  a  constant  in- 
centive to  the  most  determined,  persevering  exertion.  His 
mother  instructed  him  in  all  that  she  knew,  and  impressed 
his  growing  intellect,  as  only  a  good  mother  can,  with  her 
patient,  lovely  disposition,  teaching  him  to  read  his  Bible 
daily  when  only  five  years  old.  With  such  groundings  of 
integrity,  perseverance,  kindness,  and  labor,  he  was  schooled 
and  trained  in  his  infancy  in  facts  and  experience  that 
burned  their  work  deep  and  lasting  in  his  impressionable 
memory. 

What  we  know,  or  will  ever  know,  of  the  Lincoln  family 
in  Kentucky,  of  the  happenings  that  came  to  them,  espe- 
cially of  the  seven  years  of  "Abe's"  infancy  and  early  boy- 
hood, as  they  differ  from  the  ordinary,  will  necessarily  be 
based  on  slender  facts  and  traditions.  They  were  not  pos- 
sessed of  much  worldly  wealth  or  store.  They  were  poor, 
but  not  thriftless  people.    They  had  never  suffered  for  shel- 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  65 

ter  or  clothing,  plain  as  it  was,  to  keep  them  warm  and  com- 
fortable, or  the  subsistence  that  fed  and  sustained  and  kept 
them  strong,  healthy  men  and  women. 

Some  who  have  written  of  Mr.  Lincoln  have  represented 
the  family  as  living  in  deep  poverty,  almost  distressed,  and 
as  ignorant  as  they  were  poor  and  thriftless,  and  that  his 
life  was  a  constant  struggle  to  raise  himself  out  of  the  low 
and  ignorant  conditions  in  which  he  was  born  and  grew  to 
manhood.  The  best  refutation  of  all  such  fallacies  and 
falsehoods  will  be  to  give  all  the  facts,  with  as  much  col- 
lateral support  as  may  be  attainable,  with  as  plain  and  sim- 
ple reasoning  as  may  be,  as  we  proceed,  which  has  been  a 
constant  and  increasing  endeavor. 

Mr.  Lincoln  was  and  wanted  to  be  known  as  one  of  the 
plain,  common  people.  It  will  be  one  of  our  great  desires 
to  show  that  he  was.  It  is  true  that  he  possessed  high  and 
masterful  genius,  in  which,  or  in  comparison  with  whom, 
no  man  of  his  time  was  his  equal;  but  he  was  a  true  be- 
liever in  the  truths  that  he  taught,  that  all  men  are  free 
and  equal  before  the  law  and  before  God,  and  he  did  not 
desire  any  franchise,  privilege,  or  right  that  was  not  shared 
and  enjoyed  by  the  most  humble  and  lowly  of  his  fellow- 
men,  and  in  all  their  contests  against  tjTanny,  oppression, 
and  the  usurpations  of  power  and  wealth  he  was  their 
friend,  advocate,  and  defender  to  the  full  extent  of  his 
power. 

The  Lincolns  were  poor,  measured  in  money  and  prop- 
ert}^  but  richly  endowed  with  all  the  qualities  that  make 
generous  and  righteous-minded  people.  Their  associates, 
the  pioneers  and  early  settlers  of  the  most  fertile  and  rich- 
est inhabited  valley  of  all  the  earth  were  poor,  but  they 
were  opening  in  wealth  and  abundant  productions  for  com- 
ing generations,  such  aggregates  of  uncountable  value  as 
would  have  been  held  to  be  fabulous  in  Mr.  Lincoln's  boy- 
hood. 
5 


00  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

He  grew  to  manhood  poor,  and  among  the  poor,  as  they 
are  designated,  having  opportunities  for  acquiring  money 
and  property,  which  he  did  not  avail  himself  of,  having 
opportunities  also  of  improving  his  mind,  broadening  his 
understanding,  bettering  his  race,  and  building  the  strong- 
est character  of  the  age  in  which  he  lived,  which,  to  his 
lasting  credit,  he  improved  and  used  as  well  as  man  or 
spirit  could  or  ever  did,  as  far  as  human  knowledge  tells. 

Much  has  been  said  and  written  on  this  subject  of  wealth 
and  poverty  and  their  influences  in  the  training,  growth, 
and  development' of  men,  but  not  more  than  should  be, 
nor  as  much  as  we  need  and  should  have,  if,  in  coming, 
it  could  better  establish  the  truth.  It  is  not  likely  that 
the  relatively  poor  condition  of  the  people  among  whom 
he  lived,  or  his  own,  or  that  of  his  family,  was  any  sort 
of  hindrance,  but  rather  an  essential  and  positive  help  for 
him  in  his  preparation  for  the  mighty  struggle  as  leader 
of  a  nation. 

Of  all  the  thousands  who  knew  and  loved  and  followed 
him,  no  one,  known  or  heard  of,  ever  thought  that  wealth, 
or  greater  power,  or  any  training  or  preparation,  would  have 
bettered  and  improved  him.  All  seemed  to  know  and  realize 
that  a  power  greater  than  his  own  sustained  him,  and  that 
he  had  the  best  qualification  he  could  have  for  the  place 
he  held. 

Long  centuries  of  darkness,  ignorance,  and  oppression 
had  riveted  the  chains  of  some  cruel  bondage  on  the  races 
of  men.  The  black  man  in  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth 
century  was  a  chattel,  bartered  and  sold  from  the  auction 
block.  Luther,  Cromwell,  and  Washington  had  lifted  great 
loads  from  the  worn  and  weary  and  overburdened  in  their 
own  and  other  lands.  The  chains  had  been  broken  that 
held  down  many  a  right  and  privilege  from  mankind. 

The  grinding  had  been  slow,  but  all  the  more  certain 
and  sure,  as  that  God's  wisest  purposes  are  often  traced  in 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  67 

the  footsteps  of  ages.  He  had  favored,  and  in  the  fullness 
of  time  the  Eepublic  was  builded;  but  if  it  was  to  progress, 
its  beastly  black  man's  bondage  had  to  be  crushed  out  and 
obliterated  just  as  now,  when,  if  further  progress  is  to  come, 
the  crushing  load  of  greedy,  glutted  wealth  must  be  taken 
from  the  back  of  every  man  who  now  earns  such  scanty  liv- 
ing in  a  land  of  such  overwhelming  plenty,  where  now  our 
increased  labor  and  production  only  further  gorge  the  coffers 
and  warehouses,  already  swollen  and  bursting  with  the 
profits  and  products  of  plundered  labor. 

In  the  Eepublic  the  absorbing  topic,  the  never-to-be-set- 
aside  question,  from  1820,  when  Missouri  was  admitted,  so 
far  enlarging  the  domain  of  slavery,  to  1850,  when  Texas 
was  added  in  war,  with  an  area  five  times  as  great,  out  of 
which  five  great  States  were  to  be  made,  as  needed,  to  pre- 
serve the  domination  of  the  slave  power,  was  this:  "Can 
thus  cursed,  labor-robbing,  labor-degrading  system  be  con- 
fined to  its,  then,  present  limits,  restricted  in  any  way, 
abolished  or  placed  under  a  certain  process  of  ultimate 
extinction,  as  hoped  for  and  promised  on  the  foundation 
of  the  Nation?"  All  the  restrictive  agreements,  settlements, 
and  compromises  had  been  disregarded,  disobeyed,  and  de- 
fied as  often  and  as  certainly  as  the  growing  aristocracy 
desired  territory  for  expansion  or  States  added  for  the 
preservation  of  its  power  and  ascendency.  From  1852  to 
1860,  regardless  of  law  or  plighted  faith,  the  demand  was 
made  in  Congress,  in  many  ways,  in  two  Administrations, 
those  of  Presidents  Pierce  and  Buchanan,  and  before  the 
Supreme  Court,  that  slavery  be  recognized  and  sustained 
as  a  national  institution,  or  that  those  who  favored  it  would 
divide  the  Nation  and  build  a  slave  aristocracy  or  empire 
of  their  own. 

Thus  the  questions  in  dispute  narrowed,  as  they  usually 
do  when  oppressors  can  be  contended  with  and  resisted 
with  power  equal  to  or  greater  than  their, own.     They  had 


68  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

been  too  prosperous  and  successful  in  the  accumulation 
of  wealth  and  power  to  bear  restriction  or  submission,  and 
as  they  had  calculated  and  foreseen,  while  quadrupling  their 
holdings  and  power  through  forty  years  of  compromise,  they 
had  also  prepared  for  war  to  save  their  power  and  domina- 
tion, and  were  ready  for  it.  When  this  terrible  reality  was 
fully  disclosed  and  made  plain,  the  burning  question  on 
every  freeman's  lips  was.  Can  the  Nation  live,  or  will  it  be 
sundered  into  petty,  disputing  States,  overshadowed  on  the 
south  by  an  American  slave  empire,  taking  in  and  controll- 
ing the  slave  States  and  the  territory  south  to  the  Isthmus 
of  Panama;  surrounded,  too,  on  the  north  and  northwest  by 
the  monarchy-ridden  provinces  of  Britain?  Deep,  signifi- 
cant, and  direful  as  these  questions  were,  they  were  the 
ones  to  be  met  and  answered  by  Lincoln;  eventually  by 
Douglas,  when  his  vision  cleared ;  by  both  as  the  great  lead- 
ers of  millions  as  brave  and  patriotic  men  as  ever  served 
or  fought  or  fell  in  liberty's  cause. 

The  time  was  at  hand  when  God  alone  could  save  the 
Eepublic ;  for  men  with  power,  long  official  experience,  these 
with  the  little  army  and  navy  dispersed  and  dissipated,  and 
with  the  favor  and  sympathy  of  kings  and  kingdoms  through- 
out the  world  against  us,  had  planned  and  plotted  well  for 
our  utter  destruction. 

As  God  rules,  and  as  sure  as  he  planted  and  made  the 
Colonies  a  Nation  and  raised  up  one  of  the  world's  leaders 
in  that  time,  another  leader  had  to  come,  and  did  come, 
fully  believing  in  his  mission,  with  physical  and  intellectual 
endowments,  force,  character,  and  endurance,  and  the  skill 
and  genius  of  one  who  never  hesitated,  who  always  led,  in 
one  of  the  most  dangerous  and  hazardous  emergencies  ever 
confronted  by  any  people. 

Wealth  would  not  have  brought  or  developed  him,  for  its 
chief  use  in  those  days  was  to  sustain  and  defend  the  system, 
even  in  States  most  indebted,  like  New  York,  to  free  labor. 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  69 

Training  in  military  life,  civil  or  public  office,  would  not 
alone  have  fitted  any  one;  for  of  those  most  favored  and 
trusted,  half  of  them,  or  more,  were  not  seeking  their  coun- 
try's highest  good  and  prosperity,  but  its  division — if  pos- 
sible, peacefully;  or  if  not,  then  its  destruction;  and  of  the 
other  half,  many  were  hopless ;  some,  too,  were  doubters  and 
faithless.  A  few  were  resolute  and  stout-hearted  in  the 
beginning,  and  mostly  remained  so  through  their  lives  or 
to  the  end;  but  no  generally-trusted  leader  up  to  1856,  who 
could  lead  all  the  men  and  save  the  country,  had  appeared. 

Of  all  who  rose  and  appeared  in  the  crisis,  of  all  the 
bright,  gallant  souls  who  lighted  the  pathway  of  the  millions 
who  loved  their  country,  and  the  hundreds  of  thousands 
who  fought  and  fell  for  its  liberties,  there  was  no  one  like 
Lincoln.  He  came  at  the  right  time,  in  a  way  that  no  one 
knew  Just  how,  but  in  a  way  that  was  entirely  satisfactory 
to  a  host  of  the  bravest  and  best  men,  in  an  age  of  heroics 
that  has  not  been  surpassed.  He  came,  not  in  grandeur,  nor 
in  stately  array  nor  panoplied  power,  nor  yet  in  the  classical 
academic  form,  but  in  the  plain  Christian  way,  in  indisput- 
able confirmation  of  the  truth  of  Christ's  gospel,  from  among 
the  poor  and  lowly;  the  only  source  from  which  you  may 
expect  a  leader  in  the  cause  of  freedom. 

Stephen  A.  Douglas,  of  whom  we  will  have  much  to  tell, 
the  long-time  neighbor,  personal  friend,  and  political  an- 
tagonist of  Mr.  Lincoln,  had  ancestry  and  growth  relatively 
much  like  his,  and  was  as  certainly  one  of  and  from  the  com- 
mon people,  vni\\  line  and  lineage  running  back  into  the 
barren  highlands  of  Scotland,  to  as  poor  rocky  highlands  in 
Vermont.  Like  Lincoln  as  much  as  could  be,  who  was  from 
the  rugged  rocks  of  Kentucky,  he  camo  to  the  rich  alluvial 
lands  of  the  richest  State  in  the  West,  to  be  a  leader  of  the 
people,  if  not  like  him,  still  in  the  end  with  him,  and  like 
him  in  his  rising.  Douglas  was  as  poor  and  of  the  lowly, 
as  we  will  see.     These  poor,  self-taught,  self-trained  boys 


70  ABBAEAM  LINCOLN. 

of  the  backwoods  and  forest,  who  trusted,  opposed,  dis- 
cussed, and  debated  and  argued  with  and  against  each  other, 
were  the  leading  candidates  of  their  respective  parties. 
They  defeated  and  redefeated  each  other,  but  united  finally 
in  the  most  powerful  combination,  and  with  the  single  de- 
termined purpose  of  saving  the  Nation. 

We  visited  the  birthplace  of  Mr.  Lincoln  in  the  autumn 
of  3862,  and  several  times  afterwards  in  that  and  the  fol- 
lowing year,  but  chiefly  in  that  delightful  season,  in  the 
soft  air  and  languid  sun  of  those  mellowed  days  when  nature 
seemed  at  ease.  The  hazy-laden  sky  subdued  the  glories  of 
the  bright-mingled  leaves  of  the  forest,  waving  in  a  mild- 
tempered  sunlight  that  brought  out  in  change  and  contrast 
all  their  loveliness  and  beauty.  Under  a  lazy,  smoky  canopy 
there  was  blending  color,  distinct  and  charming  as  the  rain- 
bow paints  the  summer  shower.  In  such  days  when  our 
armies  were  in  Northern  and  Central  Kentucky,  several  of 
us  who  knew  and  honored  Mr.  Lincoln,  when  we  realized 
how  God  had  enlarged  his  work,  finding  ourselves  in  reach, 
took  all  the  time  that  could  be  given  to  visit  and  examine 
the  region,  and  to  learn  all  we  could  of  the  land  and  its 
inhabitants,  and  what  was  left  in  their  memories  of  fact 
and  tradition  concerning  the  Lincolns,  where  they  lived 
and  where  he  was  born  and  grew  to  seven  years  of  age. 

The  territory  embraced  is  small.  It  is  not  more  than  ten 
miles  square,  nor  more  than  that  in  any  continuoiTS  route 
over  it.  It  takes  in  the  two  villages  of  Elizabethtown  and 
Hodginsville,  and  the  Nolin's  Creek  farm.  We  walked  and 
rode  all  over  the  ground,  as  we  could  in  every  direction,  on 
every  open  road  and  bridle-path,  and  often  crosswise  with- 
out either  path  or  road.  We  traveled  up  and  down  the  little 
roads  and  streams,  scouted,  zigzagged,  and  paralleled  over 
it  in  something  like  military  exploration,  examining  it  in 
every  way  we  could,  riding  as  much  as  one  hundred  miles  in 
traversing  the  district  in  every  direction,  to  learn  all  we 


THE  MEN  OF  II IS  TIME.  71 

could  of  that  spot  of  earth,  almost  hallowed,  as  the  birth- 
place of  our  friend,  at  the  time  President  and  the  burdened, 
sorely-tried  leader  of  our  armies. 

In  our  way,  examining  it  as  thoroughly  as  we  could  and 
visiting  about  all  of  the  people  then  living  there,  in  their 
homes,  getting  all  the  information  that  we  could  concern- 
ing our  leader  or  his  family,  we  made  it  a  pleasant  duty. 
It  is  some  thirty  miles  south  of  the  Ohio  Eiver,  fifty  miles 
south  and  a  little  west  of  Louisville.  It  is  a  little  corner  in 
two  counties,  in  and  among  the  poor,  slaty,  shaly,  limestone 
hills  and  the  aforetime  pretty  gravel-bedded  creeks,  but 
covered  then  two  or  three  feet  deep  with  clay  and  rocks, 
washed  from  the  timber-shorn  land. 

We  were  there  in  the  fall  when  the  ripened  crops,  scanty 
as  they  had  been,  were  gathered.  There  was  a  wornout  con- 
dition of  the  soil,  and  an  anxious,  almost  forlorn  ap- 
pearance of  the  inhabitants  that  was  unusual,  almost  dis- 
tressing to  us,  even  in  war-times,  surprising  us  that,  in  sight 
of  such  fertile  lands,  any  industrious  people  would  remain 
on  such  barren,  denuded  hills. 

The  best  of  the  gnarly,  knotty,  and  brushy  little  trees 
still  left  on  the  half-bare  hillsides  at  their  best,  were  scarcely 
over  twelve  to  fifteen  feet  high,  or  over  three  inches  in 
diameter.  Of  these,  many  were  Avithering  and  dying,  and 
the  largest  of  them  in  the  bottoms  were  not  more  than  six 
or  eight  inches  in  diameter.  Most  of  these  had  been  cut 
away  to  build  and  repair  the  few  cabins  of  the  remaining 
dwellers  and  for  fuel. 

We  wondered  much  that  such  a  desolate,  unpromising 
stretch  of  barren,  rockv  hills  was  inhabited.  We  made  in- 
quiries,  and  ascertained  that  not  many  of  those  living  in 
the  small  villages  and  scattered  cabins  depended  on  the  lands 
in  the  vicinity  for  a  living.  One  old  man  told  us  that  "These 
'ere  cabins  wuz  ockerpied  in  gineral  by  wimmin  and  childern 
and  old,  wornout  fellers  like  me.    The  men  and  the  grown- 


72  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

ups  are  mostly  in  the  armies,  one  side  or  t'uther,  and  some  's 
workin'  on  the  river.  Some  uv  'em  are  up  in  boat-bildin' 
shops  at  New  Albany  and  Lewisvill,  and  some 's  runnin' 
boats  and  eoalbarges  down  the  river  frum  Pittsburg,  apast 
Cincinnaty,  and  away  down  the  river  as  fur  as  Cairo,  and 
clean  down  to  Memphis,  whar  the  Guv'ment  is  buyin'  lots 
uv  coal.  So  you  see  these  folks  are  a-livin'  about  as  well 
here  as  they  can  anywhar  in  these  parts,  and  cheaper  and 
better  pertected  than  they  would  be  along  the  river  towns. 
I  wondered  when  I  heerd  that  you  fellers  wur  a-traveling 
all  over  this  country,  and  askin'  all  about  it,  if  you  raly 
thort  that  we  depended  on  raisin'  crops  on  these  pore,  worn- 
out  hills  fur  a  livin'." 

We  inquired  of  another  quite  intelligent-looking  old 
man,  whose  age  and  infirmity  were  sufficient  to  keep  him 
out  of  service  for  or  against  the  Union — presumably  a 
Union  man,  as  we  found  most  of  these  people  to  be — what 
he  thought  of  the  country,  and  why  they  lived  on  and  on 
in  such  a  region,  with  fertile  lands  within  easy  reach.  His 
reply  was  characteristic  of  one  who  had  seen  happier  and 
more  prosperous  daj^s.  His  roused  up  his  athletic  figure, 
in  form  at  least  of  what  he  had  been,  and  the  bright  flash 
from  his  strong,  gray  eyes  showed  plainly  enough  that  he 
was  in  no  sense  a  mendicant,  but  having  the  independence 
of  a  self-supporting,  industrious  man — one,  too,  who  had 
lived  among  and  associated  with  men  of  intelligence  and 
reputable  character.  Drawing  himself  up,  as  he  remem- 
bered a  stronger  manhood,  he  said,  in  substance:  "Yes, 
gentlemen,  this  is  a  pore  country  now,  and  most  of  its  able- 
bodied,  well  sized-up  and  likely  sort  of  men  have  left  for 
other  parts,  and  the  wimmen  and  sum  children  and  sum 
old-like,  wornout  folks,  like  Betsy  and  me,  who  are  a-livin' 
apast  their  time,  is  about  all  that  is  left ;  but  it  war  n't  alius 
so  pore.  Afore  they  cut  down  and  hauled  off  most  of  the 
trees,  and  killed  and  druv  out  the  birds  and  the  squirls  and 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME  73 

all  the  game,  and  when  they  tuk  away  the  timber  and  shade, 
arter  that  the  sun  kinder  dried  up  the  clay  hills,  and  the 
winter  and  the  spring  storms  and  floods  filled  up  the  little 
cricks  with  gravel  and  rocks  and  clay.  So  now  we  have 
these  dried-up  clay  and  stony  bottoms  whar  the  pretty  little 
cricks  used  ter  run,  and  the  birds  and  game  as  war  n't  killed 
or  starved  have  found  water  and  shade  and  sumthin'  to  live 
on  whar  they  take  better  keer  of  thar  timber  and  thar 
rivers  and  cricks  and  medders  fur  paster.  We  know  that  we 
are  pore,  porer  than  we  war  when  I  war  a  young  man,  when 
we  came  frum  Ole  Virginny;  but  me  and  the  boys  have 
wurked  on  the  river  most  uv  the  time,  and  the  two  uv  them 
that  are  not  in  yore  army  are  wurkin'  thar  now.  I  am 
gettin'  old  and  wornout  and  not  fit  fur  nothin'  much  any- 
how, and,  like  most  uv  us,  when  we  git  old  and  broke  down 
and  helpless-like,  we  must  stay  whar  our  little  cabins  in 
these  pore  hills,  and  our  little  savin's  in  them,  are  all  the 
homes  and  firesides  we  've  got. 

"Our  likeliest  men  and  all  our  healthy,  growin'  young 
fellers  and  boys  hav  jined  the  army,  or  the  secesh,  or  gone 
to  the  river;  but,  stranger — and  I  take  you  to  be  real  gen- 
tlemen, 'cause  yo  're  wearin'  the  unef  orm  uv  the  Union — 
if  this  air  country  is  pore,  it  has  raised  and  sent  to  other 
parts  sum  likely  men.  I  knowed  sum  of  them  myself.  The 
Hardin  s,  and  a  lot  of  folks  with  them,  almost  a  neighbor- 
hood, went  to  Eleenoy  afore  it  war  a  State.  The  BuUitts, 
and  a  whole  lot  more  with  them,  went  to  Louisville;  and 
Abe  Lincoln  was  born  over  thar  on  Nolin's  Crick. 

"Abe,  when  he  was  a  boy,  and  his  folks,  and  the  Hankses, 
and  sum  more  with  them,  went  over  to  the  big  timber  in 
Indiany  and  on  to  Eleenoy;  and  Abe — God  bless  him!  fur 
he  's  honest — is  now  President  uv  these  United  States,  and 
I  've  heern  tell  all  along  he 's  about  the  best  President 
we  've  had  since  Washington,  and  he  's  goin'  to  save  the 
Union ;  fur  he 's  got  the  grit  and  backbone  to  do  it.     I 


74  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

did  n't  get  to  vote  fur  him,  fur  there  were  n't  no  allowin' 
tickets  fur  him  here ;  but  as  sure  as  I  'm  a-livin,  I  'm  a-goin' 
to  vote  fur  him  next  time.  So  is  the  boys,  and  a  whole  lot 
more  uv  them.  There  is  n't  another  man  livin'  in  Americky 
that  can  beat  him." 

We  came  first  to  Elizabethtown,  supposing  it  was  the 
principal  point  of  interest.  We  looked  over  the  few  scat- 
tered cabins  and  rough-boarded-up  houses,  all  of  one  story, 
and  having  not  more  than  two  or  three  rooms  each.  The 
two  main  roads  crossed  about  the  center  of  the  village, 
with  bridle  and  foot  paths  converging  on  these  for  a  center. 
There  were  not  more  than  a  dozen  of  such  dwellings  in  the 
town,  if  so  many.  We  were  directed  to  a  broken-down,  di- 
lapidated, rough,  one-room  cabin,  with  a  shed-room,  un- 
roofed, in  the  rear.  The  front  was  about  twelve  by  four- 
teen feet  square.  The  back  room  attached  was  about  eight  by 
fourteen  feet.  We  had  looked  over  it,  mounted,  and  were 
leaving  it,  believing,  as  we  had  been  told,  that  it  was  the 
birthplace  of  Mr.  Lincoln.  We  had  not  gone  far  when  a 
woman  past  middle  age,  who  came  running  up  a  path  to  meet 
us,  said:  "I  hearn  tell  that  you  gentlemen  thought  that  Abe 
Lincoln  war  born  thar;  but  he  war  n't.  That  house  [point- 
ing to  it]  is  what  is  left  of  the  cabin  whar  his  father  and 
mother  commenced  housekeepin'.  My  mother  knowed  them 
well,  and  alius  said  that  they  war  smart,  likely  sort  of  folks, 
and  alius  pleasant  and  easy  to  git  along  with.  Thomas  Lin- 
coln never  had  enough  work  to  keep  his  family  as  he  liked 
to  here;  and  mother  alius  said  they  did  a  heap  better  arter 
they  moved  to  the  farm.  No,  Abe  warn't  born  thar.  He 
war  born  over  to  the  farm  on  Nolin's  Creek,  arter  they 
moved.  Mother  knowed  them,  and  she  alius  did  say  they 
war  nice,  pleasant  folks." 

We  thanked  her,  and  were  obliged  for  her  information, 
which  proved  to  be  correct.  Some  one  of  our  men  left  her 
some  coffee  and  sugar,  for  which  she  thanked  us  as  we  rode 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  75 

on  our  way.  In  due  course  we  readied  the  farm  and  the 
cabin  on  Nolin's  Creek.  We  went  all  over  it.  It  was  a 
small  valley  farm,  with  not  more  than  twelve  to  fifteen 
acres  of  any  kind  of  tillable  land.  We  looked  carefully  over 
the  then  unoccupied,  decaying  cabin,  which  was  not  much 
different  in  appearance,  size,  or  manner  of  construction  or 
material  in  it,  from  the  one  which  the  Lincolns  had  in 
Elizabethtown.  It  was  built  of  small,  unhewn  logs,  cut  in 
and  notched  at  the  corners,  making  it  strong  and  solid, 
and  letting  down  the  logs  close  on  each  other,  so  as  to  make 
a  house-wall  with  few  openings.  These  were  filled  with 
chinking  and  clay  mortar,  so  that  the  cabin,  though  plain 
and  unpretentious,  was  warm  and  comfortable.  The  front 
part  was  about  twelve  by  fourteen  feet  square.  The  shed, 
or  rear  part,  was  about  half  as  large.  There  had  been  a 
loft  or  garret  over  the  front  part  for  beds  and  extra  bed- 
ding, and  sleeping-room  for  the  younger  ones  of  the  family. 

Our  party,  with  several  of  the  neighbors,  examined  the 
place  with  much  interest  and  care;  and  as  we  looked  over 
it,  all  did  so  with  becoming  respect.  There  was  no  one 
of  the  little  party — five  of  ours  and  ten  or  more  of  the 
people,  most  of  the  latter  being  women — who  had  any  dif- 
ference of  opinion  that  the  spot  was  one  made  sacred  to  the 
cause  for  which  we  were  contending,  and,  in  a  broader  sense, 
to  liberty  and  patriotism  forever.  When  we  had  finished 
our  inquiry,  and  had  been  all  over  the  breaking-down  dwell- 
ing and  neglected  premises  where  our  honored  leader  was 
born  and  had  grown  to  seven  years  of  age,  we  departed  with 
profound  respect  and  satisfaction.  The  people  there,  though 
familiar  Avith  the  place,  and  seeing  it  very  often,  were  im- 
pressed with  the  dissolving  homestead  and  its  suggestive 
surroundings,  and  left  it  Avith  the  respectful  feelings  which 
filled  us  all. 

Of  those  who  aided  us  in  our  search,  some  had  sons 
or  brothers  or  fathers  in  the  Confederate  armies,  or  had 


76  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

lost  them  in  that  service.  More  of  them  had  the  same  in 
our  armies;  but  in  our  work  of  investigation  we  did  not 
find  man,  woman,  or  youth  who  did  not  cheerfully  work 
with  us  and  help  us  in  every  way  to  gain  all  the  Icnowledge 
we  could  of  "Abe  Lincoln."  All  of  them  expressed  full 
faith  in  his  integrity,  honesty,  and,  what  we  noticed  par- 
ticularly, all  agreed  in  the  tradition  that  the  family  had 
strength  of  purpose  and  determined  character.  One  old 
man  remarked  that  "the  Lincolns  were  like  Boone,  who 
never  deserted  a  friend  or  gave  up  his  cause,  and  if  the 
Union  can  be  saved,  Abe  Lincoln  can  do  it.  I  have  two 
sons  in  your  army,  and  if  you  will  take  me,  I  '11  go  along 
myself." 

Our  visit  was  a  jjleasant  one  in  many  ways.  We  found 
loyalty  to  the  country  and  prevailing  sympathy  for  Lin- 
coln among  our  own  Union  people  and  respectful  interest 
by  those  who  had  themselves,  or  whose  relatives  had,  served 
and  suffered  on  the  other  side.  Some  of  those  who  had 
taken  up  the  slaveholders'  cause  were  sorely  tired  of  it; 
for  it  had  brought  them  nothing  but  disaster,  death,  and 
destruction  on  every  hand,  such  as  had  never  been  thought 
possible.  There  had  been  very  few  slaves  in  that  part  of 
the  State.  In  all  such  communities  in  the  South  the  Union 
sentiment  was  strong,  proving  the  fact,  which  was  one  of 
Mr.  Lincoln's  most  positive  and  oft-repeated  beliefs,  that 
free  government  depends  on  the  common  people — men  who 
make  their  living,  educate,  and  train  themselves  by  the 
products  of  their  own  labor  and  intelligence. 

When  we  had  finished  our  examination,  which  was  car- 
ried on  irregularly,  as  time  permitted,  through  several  weeks, 
we  came  away,  as  we  believed,  much  benefited  by  all  we 
had  seen.  We  had  been  all  over  the  little  farm  and  through 
the  neighborhoods.  We  had  seen  and  been  through  the 
homely  dwelling  where  the  great  soul  of  Lincoln  first  saw 
the  light  of  the  world.    We  had  seen  and  mingled  with  the 


THE  MEN  OF  HT8  TIME.  77 

people  of  his  boyhood,  where  we  found  the  same  sentiments 
and  beliefs  and  hopes  of  him  that  we  held  ourselves.  We 
left  this  little  corner  of  creation  with  pleasant  memories 
and  the  hope  that  the  ancestral  State  of  Kentucky,  or  the 
big,  busy  Nation,  would  take  time  some  day  to  make  the 
Nolin's  Creek  farm  one  of  the  most  sacred  shrines  of  lib- 
erty within  all  our  borders. 

Long  ere  this  we  knew  Lincoln  well  in  our  homes,  and 
had  followed  him  years  before  the  body  public  knew  there 
was  such  a  man  and  leader;  but  here,  on  these  poor  hills, 
we  had  begun  with  him  where  he  was  born,  over  all  the 
roads  and  paths  and  creeks  and  hills  his  childhood  feet  had 
trod.  We  had  seen  the  people  among  whom  his  throbbing 
life  began,  and  received  confirmation  of  our  own  belief  con- 
cerning him;  for  all  of  them,  as  we  did,  loved  and  honored 
"Abe  Lincoln" — some  of  them,  may  be,  because  he  was 
born  there  and  lived  with  them  a  few  years  of  his  child- 
hood, but  the  most  of  them  because  what  the  man  was  and 
had  done  held  and  charmed  them. 

His  nativity  among  them  was  only  incidental,  as  we  be- 
lieve; but  it  made  their  sympathy  for  him  and  our  cause 
all  the  stronger,  as  local  attachments  always  do.  But  the 
birth  and  short  residence  did  not  shape  or  found  their 
belief  in  him;  for  it  so  happened  that  Jefferson  Davis  had 
birth,  education,  and  long  residence  not  far  away,  and  we 
have  not  heard  man,  woman,  or  friend  or  foe,  make  com- 
parison, or  think  it  was  necessary  to  tell  or  attempt  to 
explain  it,  or  in  what  relation  these  Kentucky  people  held 
the  two  men.  They  were  both  able,  forceful,  powerful, 
but  not  in  the  same  degree  or  kind;  so  the  comparison 
ended,  and  the  common  people  best  understood  the  great 
difference  between  them. 

We  found  it  true  in  Kentucky,  just  as  it  was  in  Illinois, 
that  these  plain  people,  who  knew  Mr.  Lincoln,  or  knew  of 
his  family  and  its  reputation,  were  always  his  most  sincere 


78  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

friends  and  followers.  Many  of  them  we  saw  there  ex- 
pressed opinions  of  him  and  our  cause  in  the  strongest 
language  at  their  command  and  in  manner  that  was  more 
convincing.  Among  several  we  noted  another  whom  we 
remember,  that  very  earnestly  declared:  "I  've  been  a 
Democrat  all  my  life,  and  I  've  followed  Jackson  and  Ben- 
ton and  Douglas;  but  when  I  found  out  that  Jeff.  Davis 
and  Breckinridge,  Toombs,  Yancey,  and  a  lot  of  those 
hot-headed  Carolina  fellers,  were  goin'  to  break  up 
the  Union  if  they  couldn't  have  their  own  way  and 
extend  their  black  man's  slavery  and  poor  man's  op- 
pression wherever  they  had  a  mind  to,  I  quit,  and 
I  'm  goin'  to  support  Abe  Lincoln,  because  I  believe  that 
it  is  the  only  way  to  save  the  Union,  and  I  have  confidence 
to  believe  that  he  will  do  it.  He's  honest  and  true,  and 
we  've  never  heern  tell  that  he 's  ever  gone  back  on  his 
friends  and  neighbors,  even  if  they  was  poor,  and  that  he  's 
just  plain  Abe  Lincoln,  if  he  is  President  of  these  United 
States ;  and  he  's  got  lots  of  sense,  and  he  's  not  stuck  up 
a  bit,  bein'  thar." 

The  result  of  our  observations,  after  getting  over  the 
territory  and  learning  all  we  could  from  the  people,  was  as 
well  given  in  their  statements  as  we  can  do  it.  It  was 
pretty  well  summed  up  by  the  old  patriarch  of  the  hills, 
who  had  two  sons  on  the  river  and  two  in  our  army,  whom 
we  met  again.  In  parting,  he  thanked  us  for  some  small 
remembrances,  and  said:  "God  bless  you  and  prosper  you 
and  our  cause — and  I  believe  that  he  will — and  save  this 
great  nation  for  his  people ;  and  do  n't  forget  us  pore  people 
down  here,  who  are  glad  you  came  and  saw  for  yourselves 
whar  honest  Abe  Lincoln  war  born.  The  Lincolns  wuz 
pore.  They  could  'a'  been  anything  else ;  fur  everybody  that 
lived  here  when  they  did,  and  all  uv  us  that  are  here  yit, 
are  pore;  and  it  will  alius  be  so  in  this  country,  fur  every 
kind  of  farmin'  and  crop-raisin'  that  we've  tried  makes 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  79 

it  a  harder  and  worse  imdertakin'  to  dig  a  pore  livin'  out 
of  our  starved,  wornout  soil,  with  the  timber  about  all 
gone  and  the  streams  about  all  dried  up.  I  think  it  will 
be  so  every  jesiT  that  we  hold  on  and  keep  a-tryin'.  Yo  're 
right:  the  Lincolns  wuz  pore;  but  they  war  hard-workin', 
honest  people,  and  we  alius  liked  them," 

We  met,  also,  x^ustin  Gallagher,  an  old  man,  who  once 
rescued  little  Abe,  when  a  lad,  from  drowning,  when  he  had 
fallen  into  the  creek  from  a  broken  log.  He  was  proud 
of  his  service,  which  all  the  people  agreed  was  providential. 
He  had  known  the  Lincolns  well.  His  remembrances  were 
in  confirmation  of  what  we  have  related.  The  rescue  was 
fortunate,  if  not  providential;  but  the  old  patriarch  said 
that  "shorely  He  who  cares  for  the  sparrows  wuz  as  shorely 
carin'  fur  the  boy." 

Notwithstanding  all  the  difficulties,  hardships,  and  dis- 
asters which  had  befallen  the  family  in  two  generations 
in  Kentucky,  and  the  dangers  and  uncertainties  that  threat- 
ened them  in  going  further  west,  into  the  deeper  wilder- 
ness, in  search  of  a  home,  where  their  hard  labor  and  ex- 
posure would  bring  a  better  reward  than  on  those  worn- 
out  hills,  with  what  was  left  of  the  grit  and  courage  of  the 
family  under  the  pressing  necessity  of  the  situation  plainly 
before  him,  Thomas  Lincoln  wisely  gathered  up  his  fam- 
ily— his  wife,  two  children,  and  himself — packing  them  and 
all  their  earthly  belongings  into  a  two-horse  wagon,  and 
emigrated  two  hundred  miles  northwestward  to  Spencer 
County,  Indiana,  near  Gentryville,  into  a  heavy-wooded, 
fertile  country,  in  1816. 

We  found  it  true  and  verified  by  all  we  saw  in  those 
counties  that  the  Lincolns  were  poor,  and  suffered  many 
privations  in  their  Kentucky  home,  but  no  more  than  their 
neighbors,  and  nothing  like  as  much  as  many  who  were 
idle  and  thriftless  because  of  the  competition  of  slave  labor 
about  them.     In  that  little  region,  at  the  time,  to  make 


80  ABBAHAM  LINCOLN. 

any  kind  of  living,  all  of  them  were  compelled  to  be  frugal, 
economical,  and  industrious. 

The  trial  was,  no  doubt,  useful  and  beneficial  to  them 
all;  surely  so  to  the  coming  leader,  who  was  training  for 
his  life's  work.  These  people,  in  the  early  days  of  the 
century,  when  comforts  were  few  and  labor  was  the  duty 
of  every  able-bodied  person,  like  the  Lincolns  and  those 
among  whom  they  lived,  were  more  independent  and  self- 
supporting  than  the  body  of  our  people  are  to-day.  There 
are  differences,  it  is  true,  but  the  presumption,  arrogance, 
and  grasping  greed  of  the  titled  tyrants  of  Europe  and  of 
the  slaveholders  and  their  aiders  and  abettors  of  that  day 
were  not  effectively  worse  than  the  heartless,  wicked  men 
who  force  upon  us  the  starving  and  labor-cheating  pro- 
cesses of  the  corrupt,  bullying  millionaires  and  law-twisters 
and  diverters  of  our  own  remarkable  labor  and  wealth 
producing  time. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

DAVID,  the  shepherd,  who  calmed  contending  factions, 
reunited  warring  tribes,  and  saved  the  Hebrew  nation, 

in  the  rapture  of  his  inspiration  sang,  "Thine  eyes 
did  see  my  substance,  yet  being  nnperfect;  and  in  thy 
book  all  my  members  were  WTitten,  which  in  continuance 
were  fashioned,  when  as  yet  there  was  none  of  them." 
(Psalm  cxxxix,  IG.)  Disorganized  tribes,  running  adrift 
in  contention,  he  gathered  together,  rehabilitated  them, 
and  became  their  leader  to  restore  their  nation,  to  possess 
the  land,  and  enjoy  it.  This  is  as  distinctively  shown  and 
positively  proven  as  that  Moses  led  them  out  of  bondage 
to  the  borders  and  in  sight  of  the  promised  land  of  Ca- 
naan. The  task  before  our  leader,  Lincoln,  in  the  time 
we  are  writing  of,  was,  in  many  respects,  more  diflficult,  more 
serious,  and,  as  wisdom  and  experience  tell,  as  much  greater 
as  the  interests  of  thirty  millions  of  people  are  greater 
than  five  millions. 

We  believe  that  God  in  wisdom  and  mercy  rules  over 
and  controls  the  affairs  of  men;  and  this  belief  is  sustained 
by  Holy  Writ.  It  is  upheld  by  reason,  analog}',  and  all 
human  history.  The  plainest  sense,  the  common  interpre- 
tation, and  the  concurrent  judgment  of  the  wisest  and  best 
men  of  all  time  confirm  it.  A  just  and  righteous  people 
protect  the  rights  of  all — the  weak  and  the  helpless  as  care- 
fully as  the  strong  and  powerful.  Further,  the  record  of 
every  God-fearing  people  is  one  of  peace,  comfort,  and  hap- 
piness, or  a  determined  struggle  for  it  with  all  their  might 
and  power.    Tyrants,  oppressors,  and  extortioners  in  power 

6  81 


82  ABBAHAM  LINCOLN. 

always  conceal  their  purposes  and  wickedness  in  every  pos- 
sible way,  and  flee  from  the  light  of  men,  while  liberty- 
loving  people  attract  and  invite  all  men  to  join  and  assist 
them  and  keep  their  affairs  open  and  honestly  proclaim 
their  principles  to  mankind. 

If  these  statements  are  true,  God  is  our  Euler  as  truly 
and  certainly  as  that  we  are  subjects  of  his  creation.  Wlio 
fashioned  man  as  David  sang  in  his  inspiration?  Who  can 
contend  with  God,  as"  Job  reasoned  in  his  distress  and  afflic- 
tion? In  the  realization  of  these  great  truths  we  come 
into  the  strongest  light  and  the  clearest  pathway  that  can 
guide  us  in  the  consideration  of  the  life  and  times  of  the 
men  who  labored  with,  and  the  men  and  the  people  who 
sustained  us,  and  the  environments  which  surrounded  Abra- 
ham Lincoln. 

Therefore  it  was  no  accident  that  he  descended  from 
people  with  strong,  healthy  bodies,  intelligent  minds,  im- 
bued with  exalted  ideas  of  human  character;  nor  was  it  a 
strange  consequence  that  his  people,  while  not  suffering 
from  actual  want,  were,  by  their  situation,  like  aU  those 
about  them,  compelled  to  house  and  feed  and  clothe  them- 
selves out  of  the  earnings  of  every  day's  toil.  Nor  was  it 
strange  or  unusual  that  these  men — the  father  in  affliction, 
and  the  young  leader  positively — in  thought  and  reflection 
were  made  studious  and  sympathetic  by  their  labor,  sacri- 
fices, and  losses,  and  that  they  had  periods  of  doubt,  de- 
spondency, and  gloom. 

"We  met  an  intelligent  woman  near  Elizabethtown,  who, 
among  other  remarks,  said:  "Thomas  Lincoln  was  a  real 
nice,  agreeable  man,  who  often  got  the  'blues,'  and  had 
some  strange  sort  of  spells,  and  wanted  to  be  alone  all  he 
could  be  when  he  had  them.  He  would  walk  away  out  on 
the  barrens  alone,  and  stay  out  sometimes  half  a  day. 
Once  when  he  was  out  thar,  one  of  my  boys,  what  he  did  n't 
see,  hearn  him  talkin'  all  alone  to  hisself  about  God  and 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  83 

his  providence  and  sacrifices,  and  how  thar  war  a  better, 
more  promised  land,  and  a  whole  lot  of  things  what  my 
boy  knowed  nothin'  about,  in  the  Scripture.  This  was 
when  they  lived  over  thar  on  Xolin's  Crick,  on  the  farm. 
Some  of  us  was  afeard  he  was  losin'  his  mind;  but  when 
they  packed  up  all  their  things,  and  went  to  Ingiany,  his 
spells  left  him,  as  we  hear'n  tell,  though  he  was  alius  sol- 
lem-like  ev'n  thar,  whar  they  all  could  make  so  much  bet- 
ter livin',  whar  the}'  had  the  big  woods  full  of  deer  and 
all  kinds  of  game  and  fish,  and  nice  little  openin's  'tween 
the  thickets,  whar  they  could  hav  thar  truck  and  gardenin' 
patches. 

"Nancy  got  joyful  like,  mor'n  any  of  'em;  for  her  and 
John  Hanks  war  the  fust  that  wanted  to  go.  Abe  war  a 
querish  sort  of  a  boy  then,  so  consid'rn'  and  old  like  for 
a  six  or  seven  year  ole  chap;  but  then  ther  war  a  lot  of  our 
folks  work'n  on  the  river,  and  every  one  on  'em  liked  the 
boy,  and  tole  him  stories  an'  yarns  that  war  amazin',  an' 
they  did  see  lots  an'  lots  of  things  that  we  folks  never 
dreamed  on,  an'  got  to  be  reel  smart  men,  some  of  'em. 
Some  of  our  folks  went  'way  down  the  river  on  the  big 
boats  two  or  three  times,  'wav  down  on  the  biggest  river 
to  Xew  Orleans  before  Abe's  folks  moved  to  the  big  woods, 
an'  they  declared  ther  war  more  houses  thar  then  ther  war 
in  the  State  of  Kaintuck}',  and  houses,  four  of  'em  bilt, 
one  right  on  top  of  t'other,  an'  boats  an'  boats,  big  and 
little,  they  raly  did  say,  up  an'  down  the  river,  as  close 
as  they  could  tie  'em,  for  mor'n  ten  mile,  as  it  'pear'd 
like.  Some  of  'em  said  Abe  went  mopin'  round,  and  had 
spells  like  his  father;  but  then  they  war  mistak'n  about 
him,  just  like  they  war  about  Thomas.  Abe  did  n't  have 
spells.  It  was  just  the  way  his  face  'peared  when  he  was 
sober  and  thinkin'  like  and  a-studyin',  what  he  alius  did 
when  he  could  get  a  book;  and  it  did  set  everybody  a-won- 
derin'  to  see  how  much  he  knowed,  and  he  not  mor  'n  seven.*' 


84  ABBAHAM  LINCOLN. 

The  seven  years  of  Abe's  childhood  spent  among  these 
poor  hills  were  dull  and  somber  enough  for  his  parents, 
whose  daily  toil  and  shortening  returns  were  increasing. 
Time  and  the  cares  of  life  and  family  were  increasing  their 
responsibility,  finally  to  become  the  moving  force  that  would 
make  them  emigrants  and  seekers  for  better  and  more  pro- 
ductive lands.  Multitudes  sought  homes  in  the  West  at 
that  time,  and  have  continued  to  do  so — all  of  them  with 
the  hope  of  bettering  their  condition.  Most  of  these  came 
voluntarily;  but  Thomas  Lincoln  was  driven  by  hard  neces- 
sity to  be  a  pioneer,  when  it  would  have  suited  him  best 
to  have  found  means  of  living  in  some  older  settlement 
than  he  was  leaving.  He  had  little  or  nothing  of  the  ad- 
venturous spirit  in  his  make-up.  He  was  a  man  of  steady 
habits  and  conservative  methods,  who,  in  the  older  South- 
em  communities,  would  have  become,  in  the  routine  of  suc- 
cession, a  burgess  and  a  squire,  but  who,  in  the  mad  rush 
and  ventures  into  uninhabited  regions,  was  slow  and  con- 
siderate enough  to  be  called  dilatory  and  careless,  sometimes 
more  than  that. 

He  possessed  the  all-around  fitness  and  ability  to  be 
moderate  and  considerate  where  so  many  about  him  were 
hasty  and  immoderate.  His  example  and  the  confidence 
of  his  friends  in  his  wisdom  and  judgment  led  many  of 
them  to  choose  the  nearer,  partly-inhabited  region  of  South- 
ern Indiana,  when  others  desired  to  go  to  the  wilder,  less- 
settled  country  west  of  the  Mississippi.  Some,  however, 
went  to  a  tolerably  well-settled  part  of  Central  Illinois 
when,  by  careful  savings,  they  had  sufficient  means  for  the 
purchase  of  a  permanent  home  for  the  family.  Thus  they 
found  a  good  home  at  the  time  when  the  flood-tide  of  im- 
migration was  seizing  the  fertile  lands  of  our  great  West- 
ern States. 

Thus,  after  three  generations  of  migration  westward, 
the  Lincolns  obtained  a  home  where  all  who  could  work 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  85 

could  not  only  subsist,  but  live  comfortably.  In  doing  this 
they  brought  their  thoughtful,  overgrown  boy  and  the  ex- 
pectant youth,  who  was  almost  a  man  at  nineteen,  to  the 
field  of  his  life's  labor  and  achievement. 

Besides  the  hope  of  bettering  their  condition,  there  was 
another  urgency  that  had  much  to  do  in  driving  the  family 
from  Kentucky,  as  it  did  many  thousands  of  people  like 
them.  Not  only  had  the  blight  of  slavery  darkened  the 
land  with  its  immoralities  and  inherent  deviltries,  but  to 
every  man  who  was  to  live  by  his  own  labor  and  exertions 
and  enjoy  the  reward  of  his  earnings,  there  was  added,  in 
their  own  community,  the  burden,  the  direct  competition, 
of  the  stolen  labor  of  the  black  man.  By  this  system  all 
labor  was  dragged  down  to  the  level  of  the  cheapest  means 
of  existence,  to  or  below  that  of  well-fed  animals;  and  the 
cursed  burden  was  placed  on  every  trade,  occupation,  and 
industry,  in  some  measure:  on  the  farmer,  mechanic,  skilled 
artisan,  and  all  who  were  aided  by  their  prosperity,  strik- 
ing all  directly  or  indirectly  in  the  frantic  fury  of  its  de- 
stroying ascendency,  forcing  civilization  backwards  to  despot- 
ism and  barbarism. 

The  Lincolns,  prudently  foreshadowing  the  consequences 
to  people  in  their  circumstances  of  life,  with  rare  good 
judgment  fled  early  from  the  den  of  slavery  horrors,  and 
well  as  they  would  have  done  to  flee  from  an  Egyptian 
plague.  Three  generations  of  them,  at  least,  had  been  free 
and  independent  in  their  beliefs.  No  such  hopes  and  pur- 
poses as  theirs  could  exist  alongside  of  slavery.  They  were 
wise  and  foreseeing,  and,  in  their  line  of  duty,  were  put- 
ting God's  intentions  and  power  into  effect.  They  took 
a  dozen  families  with  them  in  their  movement,  and  thou- 
sands afterward  followed  their  early  example. 

Thomas  Lincoln  must  be  given  credit  for  unusual  pru- 
dence and  foresight  in  getting  his  family  and  so  many  as- 
sociates to  a  more  productive  region,  where  the  legal  and  tra- 


86  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

ditional  rights  of  his  people  could  be  enjoyed  and  sustained. 
Here  they  would  be  as  free  as  any  in  the  land  from  the 
withering  curse  of  slavery,  in  a  State  fully  admitted  to 
all  the  rights  and  privileges  of  any  State,  and  uncontami- 
nated  with  the  curse,  and  as  sure  as  any  one  of  them  to 
remain  so. 

But  to  go  into  the  wilderness  as  they  did  was  a  sad  and 
melancholy  change  that  took  all  the  courage  of  their  hearts 
and  strength  of  mind  for  the  undertaking.  In  undisguised 
sorrow  they  left  the  homes  of  two  generations,  and  parted 
with  all  the  friends  they  had  or  knew  who  did  not  go  with 
them.  Whatever  regrets  it  occasioned,  it  became  a  duty 
for  the  parents;  and  although  it  was  something  new,  it 
was  a  disagreeable  change  for  little  Abe,  whose  load  of  re- 
sponsibility was  always  greater  than  his  years. 

In  later  life  he  sometimes  referred  to  these  years  as 
a  time  of  unexpected  difficulties  and  trials  for  his  own  and 
the  people  connected  with  them,  who  worked  in  Kentucky 
for  a  very  scant  livelihood,  and  who  went  with  them  to 
their  new  forest  homes  in  Indiana.  He  once  said,  in  refer- 
ring to  the  work  and  enjoyment  of  children:  "I  was  given 
the  subjects  which  only  a  man  should  undertake  at  fifteen. 
I  was  as  well  able  and  as  strong  for  any  labor  as  I  have 
ever  been  at  nineteen,  and  have  been  kept  so  crowded  with 
the  work  of  living  that  I  felt  myself  comparatively  an  old 
man  before  I  was  forty." 

The  facts  we  have  gathered  and  related  are  meager;  but 
they  embrace  all  of  consequence  that  could  be  learned  in 
our  search  in  Kentucky.  There  is  enough,  however,  to  re- 
veal the  foundation  for  the  character  of  Mr.  Lincoln.  We 
find  more  in  the  life,  character,  and  the  study  of  Thomas 
Lincoln  than  has  ever  been  represented.  He  wae  an  hon- 
est, patient,  faithful  man,  who  devoted  his  life's  work  for 
the  welfare  and  betterment  of  his  family  and  friends.  He 
was  a  very  practical  anti-slavery  believer,  who  emigrated 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  87 

to  a  State  where  the  question  was  determined  as  fully  as 
law  could  do  it  on  the  side  of  freedom  and  free  labor.  He 
had  no  desire  to  emigate  to  a  territory  where  the  slavery 
question  was  unsettled,  or  remain  in  his  own  slave  State, 
where  he  could  have  found  fertile  lands  on  the  Ohio  River 
within  fifty  miles,  of  the  barren  lands  they  were  leaving. 

He  was  a  man  of  good  reputation  and  influence  among 
his  people — something  of  a  leader — so  much  so  that,  under 
his  advice  and  leadership — for  he  was  the  chief  man  in  the 
movement — as  many  as  one  hundred  in  all  followed  him 
into  the  wilds  of  an  unknown  and  uninhabited  country  to 
seek  their  homes.  This,  in  comparison,  makes  his  work  ap- 
pear strong;  for  leaders  of  that  early  day  seldom  took  half 
as  many  with  them.  Boone  did  not  bring  more  than  fifty 
with  him  from  Virginia  to  Kentucky,  and  did  not  take  a 
dozen  men  with  him  into  Missouri. 

Thomas  Lincoln  was  a  strong,  resolute  man,  who  was 
careful  and  provident  for  his  family  and  people.  He  was 
perhaps  more  confided  in  than  any  other  man  of  his  com- 
munity. Among  them  all  he  was  always  chosen  leader.  As 
we  have  seen,  there  were  few  things  left  for  his  discretion; 
hence,  under  the  circumstances  and  surroundings,  he  had 
small  opportunity  for  choice,  but  in  the  few  left  for  his 
judgment  his  decisions  were  always  fair  and  lenient. 
Taken  all  in  all,  there  is  more  of  him  and  more  to  his 
credit  than  can  be  found  in  the  fathers  of  Penn  or 
Washington,  the  record  of  whose  lives  was  fairly  well 
kept  in  their  time. 

The  Kentucky  lineage,  birth,  and  early  life  of  Mr.  Lin- 
coln, and  the  sober,  almost  melancholy  tendency  of  his  fa- 
ther, and  the  hard  struggle  for  a  living  through  which 
they  passed,  were  abiding,  conservative  forces,  which  re- 
mained with  them  through  their  lives.  These  tempered 
"Abe's"  mind  for  sympathetic  feeling  and  patient,  laborious 
investigation,  continuous  and  persevering  thought,  and  the 


88  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

most  careful  exercise  of  his  powers  before  conclusion  and 
judgment. 

The  memory  of  those  early  days,  his  little  boyhood's 
experience,  though  brief  and  limited,  and  the  remembrances 
and  traditions  of  the  faithful  friends  and  honest-hearted 
people  of  his  childhood  were  always  fresh  to  his  mind.  They 
created  in  him  a  love — almost  a  reverence — for  the  border 
States  and  their  friendly,  homely  people.  He  always  reck- 
oned them  as  the  balancing  power  in  the  Nation.  He  liked 
them  for  their  soberness,  slow  and  steady  habits.  He  was 
not  only  one  of  them  "in  appearance  and  for  the  purpose 
of  enumeration,"  but  the  thoughtful,  overgrown  boy  of 
seven  became  one  of  them  in  feeling,  spirit,  and  make-up 
from  1816,  when  they  "moved  over  to  Indiana." 

In  the  j^rimitive  wilderness,  in  a  wild-wooded  country 
of  boundless  extent,  they  found  rich,  fertile  lands  and  lux- 
urious growth  beyond  their  expectations,  full  of  tall,  finely- 
shaped,  stately-looking  trees,  through  miles  on  miles  of  open, 
unoccupied  forests  and  bramble  and  brier  bush  and  matted 
grass  so  thick  and  close  on  the  lowland  and  swampy  places 
that  they  could  not  be  penetrated  without  cutting  paths 
and  roadways  through  them.  These  trees  and  lower  growth 
were  full  of  animals  and  birds,  and  the  streams  and  water- 
basins  were  full  of  fish.  The  alluvial  lands  brought  forth 
their  abundance,  and  the  denizens  of  the  forest  made  it  a 
garden  of  animated  nature  full  of  life,  affording  the  early 
settlers  their  readiest  means  of  subsistence. 

With  these,  "plenty  of  deer  and  some  bear,"  it  was  a 
paradise  for  hunters;  and  with  such  easy  means  of  sup- 
port, so  ready  at  hand  that  there  was  no  doubt  of  the  neces- 
sities of  life  being  at  hand  until  farms  could  be  "cleared" 
and  the  grain  and  other  crops  would  bring  subsistence.  In 
a  well-supplied  country  like  this,  on  Pigeon  Creek,  near 
Gentryville,  Thomas  Lincoln  and  family,  the  Hankses,  Spar- 
rows, and  some  others,  who  first  came  with  them — about 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  89 

twenty,  all  told — '^settled"  and  made  their  homes  in  this 
forest. 

There  was  nothing  unusual  about  it.  Settlements  were 
being  made,  and  a  heavy  migration  westward  had  been 
in  progress  for  twenty  years  or  more.  Every  one  of  them 
was  prepared  for  the  change  and  the  work  in  hand  as  well 
as  could  be.  They  had  their  axes,  guns,  and  fishing-tackle — 
all  of  them  articles  of  prime  necessity.  Every  boy  from 
twelve  to  fifteen  found  employment.  Thomas  Lincoln 
brought  his  kit  of  tools,  which  were  the  reliance  of  the 
settlement  in  building  their  first  shelters  out  of  whatever 
came  to  hand.  They  built  their  cabins  out  of  the  most 
suitable  and  conveniently-located  timber,  and  made  the 
few  articles  of  household  furniture  they  had  to  begin  with. 

Cabin-building  was  a  plain,  every-day  kind  of  business 
with  the  settler,  requiring  hard,  persevering  work  with  his 
ax  in  cutting,  hewing,  and  sometimes  splitting  the  logs. 
The  work  for  all  came  in  rolling,  lifting,  and  raising  the  pre- 
pared logs  to  their  place.  The  corner  fitting,  the  notching 
or  dove-tailing  the  timber,  and  making  the  completed  walls, 
required  the  most  skill.  Four  to  six  strong  men  would  often 
take  the  trees  from  the  stump,  hew  the  inside  surface  of 
the  logs,  if  small,  or  split  and  face  up  the  inner  side,  with 
one  or  two  good  ax-men  at  each  corner.  With  the  neighbor- 
hood help  at  what  was  usually  called  a  '"raising,"  the  work- 
men often  cut  the  timber  and  built  a  cabin  as  much  as  sixteen 
feet  square  in  one  or  two  days,  depending  on  the  amount  of 
facing  or  hewing  and  the  skill  of  those  at  the  corners. 

The  work  of  roofing,  flooring,  making  doors  and  win- 
dows, came  later,  and  could  be  carried  on  by  two  or  three 
men.  These,  with  the  family  help,  would  build  a  com- 
fortable cabin  home  in  three  or  four  weeks.  The  joists  were 
laid  overhead,  mth  usually  two  or  three  rounds  of  logs  put 
above  them,  and  the  room  next  below  the  raised  roof  made 
an  upper  apartment,  or  loft,  for  the  boys. 


90  ■   ABB  AH  AM  LINCOLN. 

There  was  some  art  in  making  the  roof,  to  get  the  cor- 
rect pitch  and  angle,  and  in  finishing  np  the  gables  and 
the  intricate  corners.  Sapplings  about  three  inches  in  di- 
ameter, or  split-out  timber  of  about  the  same  size,  was  used 
for  rafters.  These  were  cut  long,  so  as  to  give  good  projec- 
tions, in  order  to  protect  the  mud-plastered  walls  from  the 
rains  and  dampness.  The  clapboards  were  rived  out  of  the 
straightest-grained  timber,  about  six  inches  wide  and  two 
and  a  half  feet  long.  These  clapboards  had  many  uses 
about  the  houses  and  other  buildings,  besides  that  of  roof- 
ing. Before  the  days  of  nailing  them  on,  the  boards  were 
held  down  by  heavy  timbers  pinned  at  the  ends. 

The  floors  were  made  of  puncheons,  split  timbers,  or 
slabs  as  wide  as  the  logs  would  work  them  out,  and  generally 
the  full  length  of  the  room.  They  rested  on  the  end  logs 
of  the  cabin  and  heavy  timbers  for  support.  These  flooring 
puncheons  were  faced  and  smoothed  by  an  adz  when  the  floor 
was  finished,  smooth  or  rough,  level  or  wavelike,  according 
to  the  straight  or  twisted  grain  of  the  timber  and  the  skill 
and  labor  put  on  it  by  the  workman. 

The  fireplaces  of  these  cabin  homes  were  always  built 
large  and  roomy,  so  that  great  logs  could  be  rolled  into 
them  for  ''the  backlog,"  with  plenty  of  room  in  front  of 
it  for  small  and  large  wood  in  such  abundance  that  a  log- 
heap  fire  was  built  which  would  keep  the  family  warm  and 
comfortable  for  a  day  at  a  time  through  any  wintry  blast 
that  came.  The  fireplace  was  built  of  stone  laid  in  heavy 
mud  mortar,  continued  up  with  split  timber,  heavily  cov- 
ered out  and  in  with  mortar.  The  hearth  was  made  of  the 
smoothest,  largest  stone  slabs  at  hand,  or  with  a  heavy  bed 
of  mortar,  which  was  smoothed  to  a  level.  The  heat  soon 
burned  it  to  a  heavy  plate,  something  like  brick,  so  that  it 
was  neat,  as  well  as  solid  and  substantial. 

In  the  winter  the  family  gathered  around  the  fire  in  a 
circle.     The  dimension  was  made  to  correspond  with  the 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  91 

number,  with  the  cozy  chiniuey-corner  farthest  from  the 
door  and  outside  draft  always  reserved  for  grandmother 
or  the  sick  and  feeble.  It  was  in  the  cabins  and  around 
such  firesides,  in  large  part,  that  the  distinct  independent 
American  character  was  made,  developed,  and  grew  up  to 
such  strong  and  lusty  manhood.  Based  on  undeviating 
moral  principles  and  conduct,  it  grew  and  developed  and 
gained  such  strength  as  to  become  a  fixed  and  unsurpassed 
human  quantity,  owing  much,  no  doubt,  to  the  controlling 
and  refining  influence  of  family  life  where  the  parents, 
schooled  in  morals  and  experience,  were  always  present 
with  the  growing  members  of  their  families. 

It  was  out  of  homes  like  these  that  a  long  line  of  he- 
roes, soldiers,  statesmen,  and  leaders  came,  to  mark  out  in 
wonderful  careers  their  service  for  mankind.  There  Avere 
thousands  of  them,  and  it  appears  so  far  that  it  needs  only 
cause  and  opportunity  to  bring  forth  men  and  leaders  with 
as  distinct  fitness,  zeal,  and  the  genius  for  it,  as  ever  blessed 
and  served  the  human  race.  No  man  can  number  or  enroll 
those  who  have  thus  come  and  served  and  passed  away. 
There  are  among  them  some  like  shining  stars.  We  had 
a  host  of  them  in  the  Revolution.  Since  then  we  have  had 
Jackson,  Webster,  Benton,  Clay,  Douglas,  Houston,  Yates, 
Grant,  Thomas,  Logan,  Sheridan,  Farragut,  and  the  great 
Lincoln — men  who  have  filled  the  full  measure,  Americans, 
positive  examples  of  the  triumph  of  free  institutions. 

In  finishing  the  cabins,  the  openings  between  the  logs 
were  filled  with  split  timber,  called  "chinking,"  securely 
fastened.  Over  this,  inside  and  outside,  a  heavy  mortar  was 
plastered  in,  making  a  thick,  solid  wall,  impervious  to  air 
or  moisture.  Openings  were  sawed  out  for  doors  and  win- 
dows as  it  was  built  up.  The  doors  were  usually  made  of 
split  or  hand-sawed  boards,  hung  on  wooden  hinges,  and 
the  famous  "wooden  latch,  with  its  string  or  leather  strap," 
hanging  outside.     The  windows  were  small,  often  for  only 


92  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

one  small  pane  of  glass.  In  the  earlier  days  they  served  as 
openings  for  observation  and  loopholes  for  rifles  in  defense 
against  Indians. 

The  further  finishing  and  furnishings  were  made  clumsy 
or  neat  by  the  mechanic,  where  they  were  able  to  employ 
or  get  one,  or  by  themselves,  according  to  their  skill,  and 
in  taste  to  suit  the  wish  of  the  inhabitants.  In  time,  as 
convenience  required,  other  and  more  commodious  cabins 
were  added,  when  sometimes  five  of  these  additions  were 
made,  making  a  comfortable  group  of  farm  dwellings,  in 
which  good  shelter  and  the  best  living  always  abounded, 
where  a  cordial  greeting  and  generous  hospitality  were  al- 
ways extended,  as  sincere  as  the  house  and  its  caves  and  cel- 
lars contained  the  means  and  supplies  for  comfortable  liv- 
ing and  the  overfeeding  that  was  so  commonly  indulged  in. 

Before  1860  there  were  seldom  more  than  two  or  three 
tenant  farmers  to  a  county  in  the  West,  and  these  were  ex- 
ceptional, whether  they  were  rough  and  coarsely  built,  as 
they  all  were  at  first,  or  better  built,  "and  fixed  up"  in  bet- 
ter style,  first  with  rough-sawed  boards  for  floors,  doors, 
and  ceilings,  or  the  smoothed,  planed  work  that  followed,  and 
larger  windows.  They  were  suitable  for  all  their  wants, 
warm  and  habitable;  and  as  industry  prospered  the  people, 
they  grew  to  be  models  of  comfort  and  delightful  country 
homes. 

Better  than  all,  they  owned  them,  and  they  were  in  no 
sense  a  peasantry  or  dependent  class.  Although  in  their 
beginnings  they  lived  poorly,  and  suffered  from  a  thousand 
times  greater  exposure  and  hardship  than  the  laboring  peo- 
ple of  Europe,  their  self-supporting,  industrious  manner  of 
living  made  them  confident  of  their  rights  and  equality  in 
law,  and  gave  them  the  American  independence  of  charac- 
ter, the  fulfillment  of  their  highest  desires.  These  were 
compensation  for  their  privations  and  sufferings.     As  the 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  93 

flocks  and  herds  and  other  possessions  of  the  settlers  grew 
and  increased,  the}^  built  shelters,  stables,  barns,  and  hous- 
ings for  their  animals,  often  as  good  as  their  own. 

When  the  Lincolns  and  their  friends  from  Kentucky 
settled  on  Pigeon  Creek,  it  was  as  wild  a  forest  of  timber 
and  undergrowth  as  nature  made  it.  There  were  four  or 
five  families  of  them.  They  each  had  their  guns,  axes,  some 
fishing-tackle,  and  apparatus.  Three  of  them  had  a  team 
of  two  horses  and  a  wagon  each,  and  Thomas  Lincoln,  be- 
sides these  ordinary  equipments,  had  his  kit  of  tools,  which 
had  been  recovered  with  difficulty  after  falling  into  the 
Ohio  Eiver.  These  became  of  incalculable  value  in  the  new 
settlement,  where  every  one  of  them  was  compelled  to  get 
to  work  with  all  his  strength,  skill,  and  ingenuity  to  build 
his  cabin  before  the  rigors  of  winter  found  them  unpro- 
tected; for  it  was  then  late  in  summer. 

Mr.  Lincoln,  in  relating  the  little  that  he  remembered 
of  it,  said  that  the  families  did  not  have,  in  animals,  prop- 
erty, and  money,  more  than  fifty  dollars  apiece;  yet  they 
were  contented  and  in  good  spirits,  and  set  about  the  work 
of  making  their  homes  in  the  new  region  with  all  the  eager- 
ness and  industry  of  Western  people;  and  whatever  means 
they  had  were  used  in  common,  and  whatever  help  their 
time  permitted  was  freely  given  others  of  their  little  colony 
in  building  their  cabins,  or  in  the  work  of  making  the  little 
clearings  for  the  next  year's  crop. 

Thomas  Lincoln,  being  a  strong,  rugged  man,  a  worker 
in  wood,  and  builder  of  cabins  in  Kentucky,  naturally  came 
to  be  the  leader  in  the  arduous  labor  of  building  up  the 
settlement.  They  all  worked  at  it  with  all  the  means  at 
hand.  They  were  delayed,  and  the  work  crowded  them. 
The  few  who  were  able  for  it  were  kept  busy  every  day. 
Some  were'  delicate,  some  were  sick,  leaving  not  more  than 
three  fully  able  men  among  them,  so  that  it  was  two  years 


94  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

before  the  cabins  were  floored,  doors  up  and  finished,  as 
they  should  have  been  had  the  means  and  help  been  at 
hand  as  they  all  wished  in  the  beginning. 

It  has  been  related  that  the  Lincoln  cabin  was  in  this 
unfinished  condition  for  two  years,  which  is  true,  as  it  was 
of  the  others.  This  is  accounted  for  through  his  generous, 
helpful  nature  and  the  corresponding  progress  of  the  work, 
which  was  agreed  to.  The  work  was  carried  on  as  far  as 
it  could  be  for  every  family.  Two  of  them  were  finished 
first,  one  for  Hanks  and  one  for  the  Sparrow  family,  be- 
cause they  were  more  helpless  than  the  Lincolns,  some  of 
them  being  quite  sick. 

In  the  work  of  making  and  building  the  settlement,  Abe 
was  the  constant  companion  and  helper  of  his  father.  He 
was  only  in  his  eighth  year,  but  his  development  had  been 
rapid.  He  was  strong,  and  "had  a  grip  like  iron,"  as  Hanks 
expressed  it.  There  was  urgent  and  pressing  necessity  for 
the  help  of  every  one.  His  father,  with  all  his  experience, 
endurance,  and  strength,  was  a  very  much  overworked  man. 

It  developed  that  Abe  had  talents.  He  improved  them, 
and  early  in  life  he  learned  that  he  could  master  any  pro- 
cess of  work  as  well  as  those  much  older  about  him.  He 
became  in  that  work  of  settlement  so  skilled  in  the  use  of 
the  ax  that  an  authority  said  that  "afore  he  was  twelve  he 
was  the  best  chopper  in  all  these  parts,  and  afore  he  was 
fifteen,  no  livin'  man  could  sink  his  ax  in  the  wood  like 
Abe." 

The  settlers,  in  the  opening  up  of  the  great  West  to 
cultivation,  were  ignorant  of  the  fertility  of  the  wide-open 
plains,  prairies,  and  open  lands  along  the  streams.  They 
were  fully  possessed  of  the  follies  of  their  ancestors,  that 
the  timber  and  woodlands  were  always  the  most  fertile  and 
best  adapted  for  cultivation.  Fully  believing  in  these  opin- 
ions, they  blundered  along  for  several  generations  on  this 
new  continent,  just  as  their  forefathers  had  done  for  cen- 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  95 

turies,  in  devastating  the  woodlands  and  sterilizing  the 
hills  and  valleys  of  Asia  and  Europe. 

The  little  settlement  on  Pigeon  Creek  began  making  a 
first  "clearing"  along  with  their  cabin-building  and  other 
work  during  their  first  winter.  It  was  a  necessity  for  them; 
for  they  had  to  cut  down,  grub  up,  and  clear  away  trees  and 
brush  and  briers  if  they  got  any  place  for  their  "garden 
patches"  or  a  small  beginning  for  a  field  of  grain.  Thus 
it  might  be  said  their  labor  drove  them,  and  every  one  of 
them  able  for  work  found  it  and  the  place  where  it  could 
not  be  neglected. 

Mr.  Lincoln  often  said  of  these  early  times  that  they 
were  all  "tired  out  with  hard  work,  yet  they  were  con- 
tented, and  seldom  grumbled,"  All  of  them  felt  it  their 
duty  to  do  all  they  could;  and  while  he  never  claimed  that 
he  was  an  industrious  boy,  still  he  did  have  the  good  sense 
to  see  that  the  condition  about  them  made  hard,  continuous 
labor  a  necessity,  and  he  loved  and  cared  for  and  respected 
his  parents  so  much  that  he  took  hold  as  early  in  his  boyhood 
as  he  was  able,  and  helped  them  along  in  every  way  he 
could. 

They  cleared  their  patches  up  to  about  an  acre  the  first 
year  for  each  family,  which  was  something  of  an  average. 
The  work  was  very  hard  to  begin  with,  cutting  the  timber 
down  and  into  logs,  rolling  them  into  great  heaps  and  burning 
them,  then  grubbing  up  the  roots,  which,  after  a  few  days' 
drying,  were  gathered  in  heaps  and  burned.  So  laborious  was 
this  work  that  many  able-bodied  men  spent  a  whole  year 
clearing  up,  grubbing,  and  burning  off  two  acres,  except  dur- 
ing their  seeding  and  harvest  time. 

Their  clearings,  when  of  an  acre  or  less,  were  planted 
about  half  in  Indian  corn,  which  was  the  staple  crop  and 
reliance  of  the  pioneers  of  the  Mississippi  basin  then,  as  it 
still  remains.  The  remainder  was  planted  in  cabbage,  po- 
tatoes, onions,  turnips,  and  pumpkins,  as  these  vegetables 


96  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

were  always  in  demand.  They  increased  their  clearings 
from  year  to  year,  as  their  strength  and  endurance  held  out, 
until  they  had  as  much  as  fifty  acres  for  each  family,  de- 
stroying as  they  did  it  their  finest  timber  and  forests. 

This  work  of  timber  destruction  was  carried  on  all  over 
what  were  then  our  Western  States,  with  what  would  now 
be  considered  reckless  waste,  almost  a  fury,  and  willful  de- 
struction of  valuable  property.  This  was  done  alongside 
vast  areas  of  the  richest  prairie  lands  ever  brought  under 
cultivation  in  any  country.  This  custom  of  cutting,  logging, 
grubbing,  burning  up  timber,  requiring  severe  labor,  giants 
for  rolling  and  lifting  when  they  could  be  found,  and  enor- 
mous expenditure  in  the  aggregate,  was  carried  on  labor- 
iously for  more  than  half  a  century;  for  burning  up  our 
great  forests  took  much  time  and  great  strength  and  en- 
durance. 

The  finest  poplars,  oaks,  walnuts,  and  other  valuable 
hardwood  trees  were  cut  and  heaped  and  burned,  with  no 
better  thought  of  their  value  and  usefulness  than  we  have 
of  the  rubbish  and  debris  out  of  our  streets  and  alleys  of  to- 
day. They  labored  hard  and  burned  up  trees  and  logs,  which 
in  a  few  years  would  have  had  more  value  than  their 
"cleared-up  lands,"  which  they  further  depreciated  in  drying 
up  the  many  beautiful  little  streams,  so  plentiful  and  full 
of  life  when  Boone  and  such  adventurous  spirits  as  he  found 
these  wide-stretching  woodlands. 

They  builded,  toiled,  and  worked  their  best,  and  as  well 
as  they  knew.  Their  errors,  mistakes,  and  even  their  lack 
of  wisdom  in  that  age  concerning  these  and  other  commonly- 
understood  matters  undoubtedly  have  their  counterpart  and 
parallel  blunders  in  the  wise  and  progressive  age  to-day, 
when  we  have  just  entered  upon  the  new  century. 

Some  future  philosophers  may  wonder,  when  they  under- 
stand it,  why  English-speaking  races  wrecked  themselves 
on  so  old  an  idolatry  as  the  remolding,  setting  up,  and  wor- 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  97 

shiping  of  "Aaron's  golden  calf"  in  their  halls  of  legislation 
and  all  over  the  land,  and  compare  that  with  the  forest 
destruction  of  our  fathers.  This  may  be  considered  too 
severe  now,  yet  in  this  century  people  may  have  to  move 
under  the  sun  at  the  equator  in  a  rapid  movement  for  heat 
and  subsistence,  because  the  people  of  the  preceding  "busi- 
ness men's  century  and  age"  consumed  all  the  resources  of 
the  north  temperate  zone.  At  all  events,  whatever  our  blun- 
ders may  be,  our  successors  will  know  of  them  and  tell  all 
about  them,  as  we  do  of  the  waste  and  folly  of  burned-up 
forests  and  dried-out  lands. 

In  the  Lincoln  settlement  their  customs,  manner  of  liv- 
ing, and  habits  were  as  plain,  simple,  and  generous  as  they 
well  could  be.  The  streams  in  their  season  were  full  of  fish, 
and  for  part  of  the  year  supplied  a  good  share  of  their  living. 
The  woods  were  full  of  the  choicest  game,  and  some  of  it  was 
ready  at  hand  in  any  season.  The  hunter  backwoodsman 
who  hunted  one  day  in  the  week,  would  usually  bring  in 
all  the  fresh  meat  required  by  his  family.  At  Pigeon  Creek 
frequently  enough  for  the  community  was  taken,  in  one  day 
by  those  who  went,  once  or  twice  a  week.  In  addition,  they 
tanned  the  hides  and  dressed  some  of  them  for  furs,  both 
of  which  were  put  to  the  best  possible  uses  in  the  family 
for  shoes,  clothing,  and  house-furnishings,  as  their  neces- 
sities required. 

It  was  not  long,  however,  until  dressed  skins  found  so 
many  uses  in  the  households  everywhere,  and  the  demand 
for  them  became  so  general,  that  they  could  be  readily  sold 
or  exchanged.  With  them  they  bought  their  guns,  ammu- 
nition, axes,  hatchets  and  saws,  cotton  yarn,  nails  and  salt, 
and  the  needles,  pins,  and  knitting-needles  so  indispensable. 
In  supplying  these  articles  of  every-day  use  the  dried  or 
dressed  peltries  became  one  of  the  best  mediums  of  exchange 
for  the  business  men  of  that  day. 

The  boy  Lincoln  was  never  a  hunter  or  sportsman,  or 
7 


98  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN, 

inclined  to  such  occupation  or  the  needless  use  of  the  rifle, 
but  always  avoided  the  use  of  it,  and  was  pleased  when  some 
one  else  would  take  his  place  on  a  hunting  expedition.  The 
family,  however,  kept  a  good  gun,  and  father  and  son  both 
knew  how  to  use  it  well  when  there  was  necessity;  but  no 
one  of  the  family  took  to  the  life  of  a  hunter  or  trapper, 
so  common  in  those  days  when  game  was  so  abundant. 

They  both  disliked  the  occupation,  and  they  were  always 
so  busy  otherwise  that  they  were  anxious  that  others  of  their 
community  should  do  the  banting  and  fishing.  It  took  all 
their  labor  and  energy  to  earn  a  living,  and  be  the  generous, 
helpful  man  that  the  father  was  in  his  close-bound  society. 

Mr.  Lincoln,  in  his  busy,  active  life,  sometimes  referred 
to  the  fishing  and  hunting  of  his  boyhood.  His  fishing,  he 
said,  was  always  to  get  the  fish  for  food,  and  his  hunting 
was  generally  to  help  somebody  else  who  could  do  the  hunt- 
ing and  kill  the  game,  which  he  never  liked,  and  never  did 
if  he  could  avoid  it.  Such  Avas  his  childhood  nature.  He 
seldom  used  a  rifle  while  in  any  hunting  party  he  was  with ; 
nevertheless  he  was  one  of  the  most  useful  of  any  of  them. 

His  superior  skill  and  strength  with  an  ax  or  an  oar  or  a 
gun  when  need  be,  his  aptitude  for  emergencies,  his  good 
nature  and  fine  companionship,  his  self-possession  and  ease 
in  illustrating  events  and  telling  a  story,  his  suppleness, 
activity,  and  good  sense  always  brought  his  services  into 
use,  and  made  his  company  a  pleasure  to  all ;  but  there  was 
neither  sport  nor  amusement  in  hunting  or  fishing  for  him. 
WTien  the  fish  were  caught  or  the  game  killed,  they  were 
taken  home  for  use,  the  smaller  fish  were  thrown  back  into 
the  stream,  and  no  game  was  ever  shot  at  or  disturbed  in 
wanton  sport  or  a  desire  to  kill. 

The  inside  walls  and  the  interior  finish  of  the  cabins  were 
rough  and  unsightly  in  the  beginning,  but  in  the  ordinary 
progress  all  about  them  were  changed.  The  walls  were 
smoothed  and  covered  inside.     The  great,  open  fireside  was 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  99 

filled  with  logs  and  chips  and  brushwood,  out  of  which  came 
the  cheerful  light  and  warmth  that  made  the  cabin  cozy, 
comfortable,  and  habitable.  It  was  around  such  firesides 
that  the  devoted,  patriotic  men  and  women  of  two  gener- 
ations past  grew  to  such  robust  maturity  in  morals  and 
strength  that  fitted  and  prepared  them  to  grapple  with  the 
monster  evils  of  their  time. 

Conveniences  were  added  little  by  little,  but  slow  as  it 
appeared,  and  of  necessity  had  to  be,  in  making  a  civilized 
country  out  of  wilderness  and  plain,  where  there  was  three 
or  four  times  as  much  work  needed  as  there  was  strength 
and  capacity  of  the  whole  people  or  any  community  at  hand. 
The  grounds  about  the  home,  and  its  premises,  were  cleared 
up,  but  often  some  majestic  landmarks,  the  stately  old  trees 
of  the  forest,  were  left.  Trees  and  vines  and  fruit-bearing 
bushes  were  planted  and  cared  for  as  well  as  could  be  under 
such  heavy  labor  and  perplexing  duties. 

In  the  settlement  of  these  great  Western  States  there 
is  no  doubt  that  thousands  struggled  on  without  the  com- 
forts and  conveniences  common  in  older  communities;  but 
their  exposures  and  privations  were  usually  of  much  good  in 
developing  strength  and  character  where  no  one  went  hungry 
or  suffered  for  the  necessities  of  life,  where  the  last  pound 
of  meal  or  bacon  was  cheerfully  divided  with  a  worthy 
neighbor. 

From  the  beginning  of  the  century  to  1860  a  powerful 
people  came  to  the  almost  boundless  valley,  and  labored  and 
grew  and  prospered.  They  were  mighty  men,  healthy, 
Apollos  in  form,  strong  of  arm  and  body,  clear-headed,  far- 
seeing,  and  intelligent.  They  knew  how  to  subdue  the  wild 
waste-lands  and  the  forests  and  plains,  to  build  dwellings 
out  of  the  rudest  materials,  open  roadways  across  the  swamp 
and  level  lands,  and  into  and  through  the  dense  timber  and 
thickets,  where  a  settler's  camp  could  not  be  reached  nor 
made  urtil  the  road  was  hewed  out.    They  learned  to  build 


100  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

bridges  and  rebuild  them,  often  after  every  flood-time,  how- 
to  plant  and  sow  and  reap  and  increase  their  crops  of  grain, 
and  all  that  was  here  in  such  profusion  and  bounty  for  man 
and  beast,  and  to  grow  cattle  and  horses  and  all  useful 
animals  by  the  millions,  "on  a  thousand  hills"  and  plains 
so  vast  as  to  seem  billowed,  low-rolling  oceans  of  grass. 

They  made  their  clothing  out  of  the  materials  at  hand, 
whether  it  was  the  skins  of  animals,  or  the  flax,  w^ool,  or 
cotton  that  came  later  in  succession  from  their  industries 
and  trade.  They  made  the  furniture  and  most  of  the  fur- 
nishings for  their  households,  all  they  had  in  the  begin- 
ning when  life  to  them  was  so  full  of  burdens,  when  ease 
and  luxury  were  unpracticed,  conditions  altogether  unde- 
desirable  in  the  progress  of  their  plans  and  purposes.  They 
made  many  of  their  building  and  farming  utensils,  almost 
creating  the  industry  of  farming  and  husbandry,  as  they 
successfully  carried  it  on,  until  it  has  grown  to  unequaled 
cultivation  and  the  highest  civilization. 

By  the  hundred  thousand  they  were  bright-minded  men, 
with  knowledge  and  grasp  of  affairs  equal  to  their  high 
physical  powers.  Some  in  the  multitudes  of  this  western 
migration  came  with  the  means  to  get  the  comforts  found 
in  States  and  settlements  further  east,  but  these  were  scarce. 
The  prevailing  conditions  were,  tliat  a  free,  enlightened 
people  came  west  in  millions,  who,  with  their  own  hands, 
industry,  and  genius,  built  up  in  the  middle  Mississippi  basin 
the  most  powerful  force  then  or  now  existing  upon  the  earth. 

They  labored,  they  prospered,  they  had  abundant  re- 
sources in  the  surplus  products  of  their  fields,  their  flocks, 
and  herds.  These  they  gathered,  garnered,  and  saved  for 
three  generations,  until  in  the  aggregate  they  were  a  well- 
supplied,  forehanded  people,  with  capacity,  enterprise,  and 
mental  fitness  equal  to  any  undertaking  which  men  could 
accomplish.  It  was  well  that  they  possessed  all  these,  with 
physical  powers  to   correspond,  and  that  they  had   shops 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  101 

and  factories  and  farms  and  endless  plains  capable  of 
sncli  wonderful  production;  for  as  the  century  rolled  past 
its  middle,  we  were  plunged  into  the  desperate,  inevitable 
conflict,  where  every  power  and  resource  was  strained  to  its 
utmost  trial  to  save  us. 

They  needed. all  these  qualifications  and  abundance,  and 
they  used  them  all  in  unrivaled  strength  until  men  stood 
aghast  at  the  slaughter,  waste,  and  destruction  that  wrapped 
the  land  in  fire  and  gloom. 

There  was  dire  necessity  pressing  upon  us,  no  less  than 
our  other  exhausting  requirements,  because  it  was  of  the 
highest  importance,  that  an  acknowledged,  undisputed  leader 
should  appear,  who  would  grow  up  with  us,  be  trained, 
seasoned,  hardened,  and  strengthened  by  the  trials,  labor, 
and  experience  among  us,  filled  with  the  sympathies  and 
hopes  that  animated  all,  strong  in  all  the  elements  of  char- 
acter that  made  a  righteous,  God-loving  people,  with  keen, 
quickened  capacities  at  their  best,  to  be  more  thoughtful, 
masterful,  and  mighty  than  any  other  one,  or  he  could 
not  lead. 

How  could  such  things  be?  Where  would  such  a  leader 
come  from?  jMoses,  Luther,  Cromwell,  Washington,  were 
leaders  and  reformers,  as  we  have  related,  as  the  world 
knew  and  believed  in  1860.  As  God  is  just  and  loves  justice 
and  right,  he  inspired  these  leaders  of  men,  and  raised  them 
up  from  among  the  people,  when  by  education,  training,  and 
labor  they  got  the  preparation,  the  only  qualifying  that  could 
have  fitted  them  for  their  leadership. 

Abraham  Lincoln  became  as  well  fitted  a  moral  reformer 
as  any  one  of  them.  The  trial  before  him,  the  issues  in- 
volved, and  the  war  that  was  certainly  coming,  and  the  mil- 
lions engaged  directly,  with  the  world  awe-stricken,  waiting 
the  result  as  if  it  v/ere  the  approaching  crash  of  the  elements 
and  the  wreck  of  worlds;  with  liberty-loving  people  the 
world  over  on  the  side  of  the  Republic;  with  monarchy  and 


102  ABB  AH  AM  LINCOLN. 

caste  and  aristocracy,  from  Britain  to  Monte  Carlo,  all  for 
slavery,  division,  and  downfall  of  freedom,  against  him;  in 
the  face  of  all  these,  his  task  was  greater  than  any  world's 
reform  leader  before  him. 

The  destinies  of  a  Nation  were  never  in  the  hands  of 
a  stronger  man.  His  physical  strength  and  manhood  gave 
him  power  and  endurance  beyond  any  one.  His  intellectual 
power  and  equipment  was  that  of  a  genius,  the  godlike  gift 
our  Father  gives  some  men,  so  far  above  our  measurement 
and  comparison.  "We  call  it  so  because  its  powers  and 
achievements  are  beyond  our  knowledge.  It  is  best  under- 
stood in  the  belief  that  it  is  God's  inspiration  of  a  soul  fully 
trusting  in  him.  His  high  sense  of  honor  and  his  deep  moral 
convictions  were  so  sincere,  constant,  and  true,  that  no  one 
who  ever  knew  him  doubted  his  faith,  honor,  and  integrity. 

It  is  from  this  plane  of  reasoning,  and  in  the  light  of  such 
knowledge,  that  we  must  investigate,  study,  and  reason  about 
his  life  and  character,  and  the  men  and  the  issues  of  the 
time  in  which  they  lived.  He  was  a  strong,  able  leader,  as 
much  and  as  true  as  any  one  in  history,  strong  and  ^vise 
and  powerful  in  the  cause  of  the  people  as  their  counselor. 
He  was  one  of  them.  God  made  him  this  in  a  wonderful 
Juncture  as  surely  chosen  for  the  work  of  his  life  as  God 
creates  and  prepares  men  to  lead  peoples  and  nations  out 
of  bondage  into  light  and  liberty. 

When  we  take  up  the  man,  the  cause,  and  the  men  with 
him,  through  the  times  in  which  they  lived,  the  truth  will 
open  out  in  perfect  order  and  develop  in  regularity  and 
symmetry  before  us  as  naturally  and  in  as  fitting  and  timely 
succession,  event  following  event  as  consecutively  as  the 
unfoldings  of  life,  as  unerringly  as  the  seed  germinates  into 
the  plant,  the  plant  grows  into  productive  life,  and  matures 
the  ripened  fruit. 


CHAPTER  V. 

IN  the  summer  and  autumn  of  1818,  deep  bereavement 
came  to  the  Lincolns  and  the  little  settlement  on  Pigeon 
Creek,  all  or  nearly  all  of  whom  were  from  Kentucky 
and  related  hj  kindred  or  marriage.  One  of  those  highly 
fatal  maladies,  quite  common  in  the  early  settlements  of 
Indiana  and  Illinois,  called  "milk-sickness,"  broke  out  vio- 
lently among  them.  It  was  so  named  for  want  of  better 
knowledge  to  give  it  better  description  for  its  definition, 
and  because  the  milk-cows  were  first  affected  with  it.  It  was 
a  poisonous  disorder,  beginning  with  pain  and  inflammation 
of  the  stomach  and  digestive  organs,  running  into  a  low 
fever  and  great  exhaustion,  resembling  very  much,  in  a  few 
days  after  its  invasion,  the  malarial  fever  so  common  all 
over  the  West.  "^Tien  it  was  fatal,  in  addition  to  the  first 
effects  of  the  poison,  death  generally  resulted  from  the  de- 
struction of  the  assimilative  functions  of  these  organs  and 
consequent  starvation. 

The  localization  of  the  poison  was  and  remains  a  matter 
of  doubt.  By  many  observers  it  was  believed  to  exist  in 
some  plant  which  cattle  ate  late  in  the  fall  when  herbage 
was  scarce  and  dried  up.  It  was  believed  by  others,  with  as 
much  reason,  that  it  was  in  the  water  in  the  little  streams 
and  basins,  which  were  usually  low  in  the  fall  season.  The 
disease  was  always  milder  when  the  streams  were  full  and 
the  grass  was  gTeen.  Those  believing  that  it  was  some 
mineral  poison  in  solution  in  the  water  at  its  low  stage  that 
carried  and  brought  on  the  sickness,  could  not  verify  it;  for 
the  disease  did  not  have  the  distinctive  symptoms  of  any 

103 


104  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

mineral  poison.  Under  the  closest  observation  the  cause 
seemed  to  be  in  one  or  the  other,  and  it  may  have  had  its 
origin  in  both  the  herbage  and  water. 

It  was  ordinarily  as  difficult  to  locate  the  suspected  spot 
as  it  is  in  any  uncertain  cause  of  pestilence.  As  the  cause 
was  so  uncertain,  no  one  would  damage  his  property  by 
locating  such  a  plague  on  or  about  it  without  investigation 
and  proof  that  would  make  it  a  reasonable  certainty. 

Suspected  localities  were  occasionally  fenced,  sometimes 
with  supposed  benefits,  but  as  often  otherwise;  so  that,  to 
this  day,  this  pestilence,  so  deadly  in  some  localities  as  it 
became  in  the  ill-fated  settlement  on  the  little  creek,  has 
left  us  no  better  knowledge  of  the  cause  of  its  existence  or 
its  waste  of  life  than  the  presumption  that  it  was  a  poisonous 
malady,  or  may  be  something  of  that,  and  a  complication 
with  some  malignant  form  of  malarial  disease,  which  latter 
is  caused  by  some  other  undiscovered  poison.  We  are  toler- 
ably certain  that  the  malarial  poison  is  developed  in  the 
decay  and  decomposition  of  vegetable  growth  and  in  the 
eliminated  gases,  or  by  the  microbic  millions  generated  in 
these  decomposing  gases,  which,  like  the  "milk-sickness," 
is  a  poison  which  prevails  in  new  settlements,  and  is  often 
deadly  in  its  effects.  There  is  little  doubt  that  both  of  these 
virulent  poisons  wrought  out  their  terrible  destruction  not 
alone,  but  together,  at  the  little  creek. 

Whether  alone  or  not,  the  unknown,  unlocated  pestilence 
in  killing  fury  came  into  the  quiet  Pigeon  Creek  neighbor- 
hood when  the  settlers  were  neither  expecting  nor  prepared 
for  any  unusual  sickness.  They  were  without  medicines  and 
the  ordinary  means  and  supplies,  commonly  kept  in  the  older 
settlements,  and  no  physician  nearer  than  thirty  miles.  In 
this  condition,  unprepared  for  the  treatment  of  such  ail- 
ments, the  devouring  infection  swept  down  upon  them  like 
a  demon,  and  ere  the  winter  of  1818  arrived,  one-half  of  the 
first  twenty  from  Kentucky  were  dead  and  buried,  and  those 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  105 

left  were  sore  and  sick  in  mind  and  body  from  the  lingering 
effects  of  the  plague,  and  worse  over  their  irretrievable 
losses.  Most  conspicuous  and  most  loved  of  all,  Nancy  Lin- 
coln, wife  and  mother,  was  one  of  them  the  father  mourned 
in  his  sorrow;  for  she  was  a  dear  woman  to  him,  and  Abe, 
the  thoughtful,  expectant  boy,  whose  quickened  life  was  to 
see  and  carry  and  live  through  so  much  of  human  grief,  was 
thrown  into  his  first  profound  and  lasting  one. 

In  that  dreary  tunber  settlement,  in  the  somber  October 
days,  when  ten  of  their  colony  were  taken  across  the  dark 
and  turbid  river  in  less  than  so  many  weeks,  when  a  loving 
mother  was  torn  from  her  somber-minded,  disconsolate  bo}', 
he  was  in  his  tenth  year.  He  mourned,  but  he  was  not 
hopeless,  as  he  once  said,  "I  knew  that  my  mother  was  a 
good  woman,  and  the  Father  who  created  such  would  always 
care  for  them."  He  often  said  that  he  could  well  remember 
how  lonely  and  cheerless  the  grave  of  his  mother  appeared, 
and  the  strong  desire  he  had  to  have  the  ceremony  of  Chris- 
tian burial  nerved  him  to  the  task  of  a  long  journey  in 
winter  to  invite  a  minister,  that  her  life  and  memory  might 
be  respected. 

In  the  haste  of  the  awestruck  community,  when  so  many 
were  dead  and  dying,  she  had  been  silently  laid  to  rest 
without  rite  or  observance  of  any  kind.  Father  and  son 
were  as  busy  as  any,  where  all  were  overworked  and  weary 
with  caring  and  watching  from  day  to  day  their  dear  friends 
as  they  recovered  or  passed  away.  In  addition  to  this, 
Thomas  Lincoln,  who  has  been  called  "thriftless,"  with  the 
help  of  his  ten-year-old  boy  and  John  Hanks,  sawed  out  by 
hand  the  boards  and  made  coffins  for  all  who  died,  that 
each  victim  might  have  the  best  and  most  respectful  burial 
vrithin  their  power. 

They  grieved  over  the  want  of  funeral  observances,  none 
more  than  Abe,  who,  as  soon  as  the  endemic  was  over,  made 
a  long  journey  of  sixty  miles  through  the  snow  and  cold 


106  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

weather  of  December,  afoot,  poorly  shod  in  moccasins;  but 
his  heart  was  strong  in  his  work,  and  it  all  went  well.  He 
secured  the  services  of  Eev.  David  Eikin,  an  itinerant  Meth- 
odist minister,  one  of  God's  pioneers  into  the  forests,  who 
labored  hard  for  the  love  of  men  on  slender  pay,  but  a 
sharer  in  all  the  settlers  had.  He  came  shortly  afterwards 
and  preached  a  feeling  and  impressive  sermon  in  memory 
of  the  departed  wife  and  mother.  All  were  deeply  affected, 
and  a  whole  day  was  given  to  the  meeting,  and  not  one  of 
those  who  had  died  was  neglected  by  the  good  man  in  his 
heartfelt  work. 

Occurrences  such  as  these  best  reveal  and  delineate  char- 
acter. The  son's  affectionate  desire  was  so  strong  that  he 
willingly  undertook  a  man's  work  that  his  mother's  memory 
might  be  kept  sacred  in  their  hearts  and  respected  as  it 
should  be,  proving  his  faith  b}'  his  works  in  his  boyhood, 
building  them  on  an  enduring  basis — love  for  his  mother, 
faith  in  God  as  he  believed,  and,  as  far  as  his  growing  mind 
could  reason  out  the  subject,  he  had  faith  in  the  future  ex- 
istence of  a  beautiful  soul  like  hers. 

The  winter  following  this  appalling  sickness  and  death 
of  half  of  the  brave  spirits,  that  forced  the  dangers  and 
difficulties  of  the  new  settlement,  who  bivouacked,  in  the 
wild  woods  of  Indiana  to  persevere  and  build  homes,  was  a 
long,  lonesome,  and  sorrowful  one.  It  was  a  terrible  afflic- 
tion to  the  Lincolns,  father  and  son,  and  so  to  others  like 
them,  and  it  was  such  a  severe  and  irreparable  loss  to  so 
many  of  them,  such  a  staggering  blow,  with  so  much  danger 
ahead  in  the  unlocated  "milk-sickness,"  that  it  would  have 
driven  the  remainder  back  to  the  poor  hills  of  Hardin 
County,  had  it  not  been  for  Thomas  Lincoln  and  John 
Hanks,  resolute  men,  the  main  stay  and  trusted  leaders  of 
these  sorely-tried  people. 

Nevertheless,  grief  and  sorrow,  that  was  developing  the 
boy's  deep  sympathy  for  all  who  grieved  and  were  heavily 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  107 

burdened,  burned  in  his  mind  so  indelibly  that  they  re- 
mained a  part  of  his  nature.  No  one  ever  heard  him  deliver 
an  address,  long  or  short,  Avhen  it  was  appropriate,  without 
being  impressed  positively  that  his  soul  was  full  of  human 
sympathy. 

The  little  he  was  inclined  to  relate  of  the  dreary  winter 
was  that  it  was  a  lonely,  sorrowful  one.  By  some  means, 
but  through  his  own  diligence,  he  got  a  copy  of  iEsop's 
'Tables."  It  was  by  his  mother's  attention  and  his  own 
perseverance  that  he  was  able  to  read  at  that  early  age. 
A  little  later,  in  the  winter  or  the  next  spring,  he  borrowed 
a  copy  of  Bunyan's  "Pilgrim's  Progress" — good  books  for 
him  every  way  in  his  care-burdened,  thoughtful  condition. 
There  was  relief  in  iEsop,  and  deep  reasoning  in  Bun3'an. 
Thev  were  veritable  classics,  which,  with  his  mother's  Bible, 
were  the  books  on  which  he  laid  the  foundation  for  his  edu- 
cation, forming  and  guiding  his  strength  of  mind  and  char- 
acter. 

While  all  about  them  was  so  full  of  distress,  there  were 
also  some  benefits.  It  was  a  school  of  experience  to  them 
and  a  thousand  such  other  settlements,  where  the  men  and 
women  of  the  wild,  unbounded  West  would  need  the  full 
instruction  and  experience  that  came  from  work,  hardship, 
disappointments,  and  losses,  where  success  could  only  come 
through  the  most  severe  labor,  perseverance,  and  fortitude. 
In  it  there  was  to  Abe  the  distinct  and  lasting  benefit,  that 
more  than  any  other  time  his  inquiring  and  studious  habits 
were  formed. 

Henceforward  he  was  a  student.  Without  knowing  any- 
thing of  formulas  or  systems,  he  dived  into  the  heart  of 
subject  after  subject  as  they  opened  to  his  laborious  inquiry. 
He  devoted  every  spare  moment  on  these  three  books  during 
the  winter,  going  over  them  patiently  three  times  each  in  the 
close  study  he  gave  them. 

"When  his  hard  day's  work  was  done  outdoors,  in  log- 


108  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

ging,  going  to  mill,  or  getting  firewood,  as  soon  as  he  got  to 
the  house  he  would  take  his  piece  of  cornbread  and  pork  in 
one  hand  and  his  book  in  the  other,  get  down  some  way 
before  the  big  log  fire,  and  study  and  read  his  books  until 
midnight,  often  much  later  as  we  believed;  but  as  all  of  us 
went  to  sleep  early  after  a  hard  day's  work,  we  did  n't  knoAv 
how  late  he  read.  On  the  next  day  he  was  always  telling 
us  about  what  he  had  been  reading.  No  matter  how  busy 
we  were,  we  always  listened;  for  he  could  always  tell  a  story 
so  cute  that  everybody  wanted  to  hear  it.  He  could  beat 
anybody  arguing,  not  excepting  the  preacher,  and  you  know 
we  had  Elder  Cartwright  and  some  other  big  men  in  the 
Church,"  This  is  the  substance  of  John  Hanks's  recollec- 
tion of  Lincoln's  boyhood. 

In  his  study,  as  well  as  in  his  observation  of  ordinary 
things,  he  soon  became  master  of  all  the  information  at 
hand,  in  which  he  had  increasing  interest  and  seemed  never 
to  be  idle  a  moment  when  it  was  possible  to  increase  his 
store  of  knowledge.  In  a  few  months  after,  some  other  good 
books  came  into  his  possession.  Among  them  he  was  de- 
lighted to  get  copies  of  "Paradise  Lost"  and  Weems's  "Life 
of  Washington."  These  and  those  already  mentioned  were 
his  early  text-books,  most  of  his  library.  He  read  and 
studied  them  with  all  the  application  and  thoughtfulness 
of  a  studious  boy,  who  applied  himself  to  that  labor  as  ear- 
nestly as  that  in  the  field  or  forest,  read  and  studied  them 
over  and  over,  until  he  seemed  to  know  every  fact  they 
contained,  and  a  great  part  of  all  of  them  by  heart. 

He  was  a  philosopher  from  the  beginning,  and  as  thor- 
oughly inductive  in  his  methods  of  reasoning  as  Lord  Bacon. 
He  was  in  all  things  a  reasoner.  He  was  delighted  in  con- 
trasts and  analytical  discussions  before  he  knew  the  mean- 
ing of  such  terms,  while  he  was  a  child.  He  was  born  to  an 
inquiring,  searching  form  of  thought,  as  much  as  any  one 
ever  was. 


s 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  109 


When  at  or  under  seven  years,  in  Kentucky,  he  was  re- 
turning from  fishing  with  only  one  fish.  Meeting  a  dis- 
charged soldier  of  the  War  of  1812,  he  gave  it  to  him  at 
once  without  a  request.  When  he  reached  home  and  his 
father  had  learned  of  the  circumstance,  he  asked  Abe, 
"What  reason  did  you  have  for  olfering  your  only  fish  to  the 
soldier?"  Abe  replied  at  once,  "We  must  be  generous  and 
free  with  these  men;  so  you  have  all  told  me,  and  it  was  the 
best  I  could  do  for  him  when  I  met  him."  Thus  he  was  a 
reasoner  and  a  patriot  at  seven. 

The  "Fables"  of  ^sop  brought  a  field  of  thought  to  his 
deeply  inquisitive  and  causative  cast  of  mind,  which  took 
firm  hold  upon  him,  and  marks  as  well  as  it  can  be  done  the 
start  in  the  work  that  made  him  a  reasoner,  in  practical  and 
humorous  story-telling.  He  could  illustrate  his  thought.- 
with  talent  and  aptitude  for  it,  in  substance,  form,  and  ap- 
propriateness beyond  any  comparison.  Hence  he  was  always 
ready  with  a  story  or  allegory  in  illustration,  which  never 
failed  to  illustrate.  ..^sop,  mature  as  he  was,  did  not  draw 
clearer  or  more  distinct  parallels. 

Later  his  schooling  and  early  education  will  be  taken  up. 
It  has  been  referred  to  here  principally  to  fix  the  period 
when  he  took  up  books  and  study,  the  nature  of  the  books, 
and  the  lines  of  knowledge  and  learning  along  which  his 
course  of  study  took  him;  how  his  wits  were  sharpened  and 
his  mind  broadened  under  his  persevering,  self-directed 
efforts.  These  remained  and  grew,  and  his  purposes  became 
more  firmly  fixed  than  ever  to  gather  information  and  knowl- 
edge from  every  obtainable  source  as  time  rolled  on. 

During  the  same  time  he  borrowed  a  copy  of  the  Statutes 
of  Indiana  from  a  justice  of  the  peace  in  the  neighborhood, 
which  he  studied  as  diligently  as  the  more  attractive  books, 
much  to  his  advantage;  for  in  addition  to  the  statute  laws 
and  regulations  of  the  State,  which  were  all  instructive  to 
an  apt  and  studious  boy,  it  contained  the  Declaration  of 


110  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

Independence,  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States,  and 
that  of  the  State  of  Indiana.  These  formed  the  basis  of 
his  legal  education,  and  fix  the  time  when  he  first  began 
the  study  of  political  subjects. 

When  we  consider  that  this  boy  of  ten  had  mastered 
his  six  books  better  than  men  usually  do,  the  light  begins 
to  break  upon  us  that  such  a  boy  grew  to  be  a  wonderful 
man,  a  leader,  and  full  of  the  knowledge  that  leads  to  wis- 
dom and  righteousness.  Many  a  college-bred  lawyer  learned 
this  to  his  astonishment  aud  regret,  who  met  him  in  court 
under  the  belief  that  he  was  "a  backwoods  country  lawyer." 

The  weary  winter  following  his  mother's  death  passed. 
The  spring  and  summer  wore  away  with  no  unusual  happen- 
ing, and  the  dreary  home  was  lonesome  and  cheerless  still, 
because  the  gentle,  guiding  spirit  of  the  one  that  all  loved 
had  departed.  With  the  melancholy  tendency  so  strong  and 
surely  increasing  at  the  time,  it  would  be  difficult  to  im- 
agine or  reason  out  to  conclusion  what  would  have  been  the 
result  if  a  gentle  hand  and  a  loving  soul  had  not  taken  the 
place  of  the  departed  mother. 

The  Providence  that  cares  for  the  sparrow  shapes  our 
ends,  brought  them  a  blessed  woman,  a  real  evangel  for  that 
sorely-afflicted  and  tried  community  and  severely-bereaved 
family.  She  was  a  good,  strong-minded  woman,  kind  and 
dear  to  the  heart  of  Abraham  Lincoln,  for  she  was  the  wise 
and  loving  woman  under  whose  faithful  training  and  ex- 
ample the  great  American  waxed  strong.  In  ilTovember, 
1819,  Thomas  Lincoln  and  Sarah  Bush  Johnston  were  mar- 
ried, after  the  short  period  of  one  or  two  days'  courtship 
and  preparation,  in  the  neighborhood  of  Elizabethtown, 
Kentucky,  the  old  home  settlement  of  the  Lincolns.  The 
preparations  were  delayed  in  order  to  get  the  furniture, 
household  goods,  and  all  the  little  convenience-making  be- 
longings of  the  former  Mrs.  Johnston  ready  for  immediate 
removal  with  herself  to  the  desolate  home  in  Indiana. 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  HI 

Whatever  other  considerations  of  old  acquaintance,  senti- 
ment, and  the  fitness  and  compatibilities  of  the  people  may- 
have  been  that  led  to  this  marriage,  there  can  be  no  doubt 
that  the  lonely  home  of  the  Lincolns  and  the  well-being  of 
the  sad,  disconsolate  boy  depended  on  the  labor  and  loving 
care  of  such  a  woman,  and  that  she  and  all  that  fortune 
favored  her  with  were  sorely  needed  for  both  the  physical 
and  moral  well-being  of  the  family  and  the  life  and  progress 
of  the  boy.  It  was  well  that  she  was  "a  handy  forehanded 
woman,"  and  that  her  house  was  full  of  indispensable  ar- 
ticles, every  one  of  which  came  to  be  useful  and  a  relief  in 
the  narrowed  domestic  economies  of  the  pioneer  settlement. 
It  took  all  of  the  two  days  or  more  to  get  them  packed  and 
boxed  and  in  shape  for  the  journe}'.  They  secured  the 
largest-boxed  wagon  and  four  of  the  strongest  draft  horses, 
and  with  three  or  four  saddle-horses  for  such  as  could  ride 
on  horseback,  the  second  migration  was  made.  Although 
there  had  been  fears  of  the  sickness  and  mortality  at  their 
new  home  in  Indiana,  a  number  of  their  old  friends  and 
neighbors  went  with  them. 

Sarah  Bush  and  Thomas  Lincoln  were  friends  and  neigh- 
bors before  the  first  marriage  of  either  of  them.  When  they 
became  single  again  by  the  death  of  husband  and  wife,  it 
was  believed  by  all  their  friends  that  their  marriage  was  a 
wise  and  prudent  one,  and  that  the  rapid  return  and  removal 
to  Indiana  was  a  work  of  saving  necessity.  By  her  former 
marriage  there  were  two  daughters  and  a  son,  who  went 
with  them. 

Her  goods  and  furnishings  and  supplies  brought  some- 
thing of  use  and  comfort  to  all;  and  better,  her  genial,  kind 
heart  brought  confidence  and  happiness  to  the  desolate 
home.  In  progTess  of  her  thrifty,  housewifely  cares  and  at- 
tention, she  reanimated  and  brought  back  their  persevering 
spirit,  that  led  them  into  the  wilderness  to  seek  their  homes. 
It  was  not  long  until  work  and  economy  brought  better  con- 


112  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

ditions  under  the  direction  of  motlierly  sense  and  energy 
that  made  things  go. 

Her  coming  worked  out  a  little  revolution  in  the  family. 
Many  believed  so  in  the  settlement.  The  departed  were  in 
no  wise  forgotten  nor  their  memory  neglected,  but  work 
and  thoughtful  care  for  the  living  required  all  their  ener- 
gies. The  preparations  for  muter,  the  gathering  of  food 
and  fuel,  and  the  housing  and  clothing  set  them  all  at  work, 
and  action  prevailed  where  father  and  son  had  been  mourn- 
ing out  their  days.  They  were  brought  face  to  face  by  her 
teaching  and  example  to  the  best  they  could  do  in  the 
struggle  for  existence.  It  was  not  strange,  but  a  natural 
result,  and  what  was  to  be  expected  that  Abe,  bright- 
minded  boy  as  he  then  was,  whose  chief  delight  was  to  read 
and  study,  would  arouse  from  his  overladen  burdens  and 
receive  a  new  and  gladdening  inspiration  from  this  good, 
noble-minded  woman. 

Momentous  events  were  culminating  and  crowding  along 
fast  in  those  days.  The  boy  was  to  grow  in  strength  and 
wisdom  and  knowledge,  where  this  woman  was  to  lead  him 
in  the  groundings  of  character  on  granite-like  foundations. 
So  firm  and  immovable  were  these  laid,  that  neither  adver- 
sity nor  prosperity  could  deviate  him  one  moment  from  his 
purposes.  By  her  teachings  she  fixed  his  faith  in  his  Maker 
so  firmly  that  all  the  powers  of  darkness  and  hell  could  not 
prevail  against  him.  He  never  forgot  the  work  of  his  pa- 
tient, devoted  stepmother,  "who  did  more  than  any  other 
person  to  make  a  man  of  me,"  as  he  often  expressed  it. 

The  cabin  home  became  at  once  the  object  of  unremitting 
care,  attention,  and  labor.  Her  mind  was  constantly  em- 
ployed in  designing  and  maturing  the  best  that  was  possible 
with  the  means  at  hand.  Her  hands  were  scarcely  ever  idle, 
and  the  results  of  her  superintendence  and  care  were  easy 
proof  of  it.     That  her  work  and  ingenuity  were  the  saving 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  113 

demands  of  that  backwoods  cabin  if  its  people  were  to  live, 
went  without  saying. 

As  soon  as  she  was  settled  in  her  new  home  the  place  was 
righted  and  put  in  order,  inside  and  out.  She  was  a  day-and- 
night  destroyer  of  dirt  and  filth  and  the  nests  of  vermin  or 
insect-breeding  plagues.  The  home,  though  plain  and  made 
at  best  of  rough,  unsmoothed  boards,  was  neat  and  clean, 
and  though  its  inmates  were  clad  in  "homespun  linsey  and 
jeans,"  they  were  always  spoken  of  as  "tidy,  likely  folks, 
whose  wimmin  did  a  sight  of  sewin'  and  mendin'  and  per- 
vidin'  for  winter." 

In  their  persevering  work  after  she  came,  the  home  was 
fitted  up  with  the  necessities  and  all  the  comforts  which 
their  clever  minds  and  busy  hands  could  devise  and  carry 
on.  Work  was  found  for  every  one  of  them,  healthy,  in- 
vigorating exercise  and  labor  that  was  to  bring  their  living, 
their  food,  their  clothing,  and  the  warmth  and  cheer  about 
the  fireside,  and  make  them  strong,  healthy  men  and  women 
for  the  world  of  work  before  them.  In  the  routine  of  their 
work  there  was  little  variety  or  relaxation;  not  enough,  but 
which  they  supplied  as  well  as  they  could  with  hope  so 
strong  that  it  became  ambition.  This  and  their  splendid 
energies  that  came  from  healthy  living  helped  them  forget 
the  sameness  of  their  daily  toil  and  endurance,  that  was 
training  and  developing  a  generation  of  men  and  women 
who  were  to  do  as  much  of  the  world's  work  for  humanity 
as  any  generation  since  "the  morning  stars  sang  together." 

They  tilled  their  small  fields  or  clearings  with  industrious 
•care,  and  increased  them  as  ability  for  the  work  and  op- 
portunity came.  They  planted  their  crops,  and  sowed  their 
grain  of  corn  and  wheat  and  oats,  or  rye  or  buckwheat,  with 
increasing  attention  and  regularity;  and  so  of  the  vege- 
tables and  "garden  truck,"  potatoes,  turnips,  sweet-pota- 
toes, cabbage,  pumpkins,  squashes,  onions,  peas,  and  the 
8 


114  ABB  AH  AM  LINCOLN. 

ad  infinitum  of  the  field  and  garden.  They  cultivated, 
plowed,  and  tended  them  with  the  best  implements  at  hand — 
often  rude,  rough  ones  of  their  own  make — through  the 
spring  and  summer.  In  the  fall  they  gathered  their  re- 
maining crops,  as  through  the  summer  they  had  harvested 
their  grain.  The  surplus  was  set  aside  and  sold  as  time 
and  necessity  required  or  provided  some  kind  of  market; 
but  the  greater  share^ — all  they  needed  for  themselves  and 
for  the  generous  hospitality  maintained  in  the  settler's 
home — was  stacked  and  cribbed  and  buried,  and  kept  in 
the  best  possible  condition  for  use  and  disposition. 

The  cabin  was  improved  and  bettered,  doors  were  hung 
and  repaired,  floors  were  laid  below  and  above,  a  stairway 
was  built,  and  the  upper  half -story  was  made  available  for 
use.  The  increased  family  required  more  room.  Other 
cabins  were  built  on  and  connected  with  the  first  one;  and 
as  there  were  more  hands,  and  stronger  ones,  to  help  than 
when  Thomas  Lincoln  built  the  first,  they  could  use  their 
tools  to  better  advantage.  They  kept  their  crosscut  and 
whipsaw  constantly  going  with  two  sons  and  several  of  the 
colony,  who  repaid  help  for  help.  They  finished  their  build- 
ings, made  fioors  and  doors  and  finishings  out  of  hand- 
sawed  boards;  and  the  tables  and  cupboards  and  shelves 
were  planed  and  smoothed,  the  first  in  the  settlement.  The 
home  was  made  more  comfortable  and  roomy  with  all  the 
articles  they  knew  how  to  make  that  were  used  in  their 
plain  domestic  living;  and  some  iron,  steel,  and  wooden 
kitchen  utensils  were  added  by  Mrs.  Lincoln.  She  brought 
beds  and  bedding  and  home-made  clothing  within  their 
reach.  Thus  new  life  and  better  conditions  came  about. 
All  were  interested  because  all  had  contributed  the  best 
their  hands  could  do. 

The  work  kept  on  under  the  directing  mind  and  busy 
hands  that  wrought  out  at  least  a  comfortable  living  in 
place  of  despair  and  desolation.     These  are  strong  words; 


THE  MEN  OF  HTS  TIME.  115 

and  the  conditious  represented  were  serious,  but  not  more 
than  the  reality  before  the  father  and  son.  They  were 
without  a  liome  or  home  comforts  when  the  blessed  good 
woman  came  over  from  Kentucky  just  in  the  nick  of  time, 
and  saved  them. 

There  was  little  change  as  the  time  rolled  on  in  the 
timbered  liome.  They  avoided  "milk-sickness"  by  care- 
ful fencing  off  the  suspected  "licks"  where  the  cattle  drank 
and  pastured  in  the  dry  fall  seasons;  thus  affording  proof 
there,  as  elsewhere,  that  with  close  attention  the  dangerous 
places  could  be  isolated.  It  was  the  same  there  as  in  many 
other  places,  that  the  experience  came  in  severe  losses 
and  misfortune.  They  were  not  able  to  protect  themselves 
as  well  from  the  all-prevailing  poison  of  malaria  so  com- 
mon in  the  settlement  of  any  new  region,  especially  so  in 
the  rich  alluvial  lands  of  Central  Indiana  and  Illinois,  where 
malarial  complaints  appeared  in  greater  or  less  severity 
every  year. 

ISTot  long  after  his  second  marriage,  Mr.  Lincoln  joined 
the  Baptist  Society  that  was  formed  in  their  neighborhood. 
The  family  attended  at  the  log  "meeting-house"  which  they 
built  there,  as  long  as  they  remained.  The  work  of  farm- 
ing and  making  their  living,  educating  and  training  the 
children  to  useful  work  of  some  kind,  went  on  from  year 
to  year  in  much  the  same  way,  with  little  to  interest  them 
more  than  the  increasing  movement  westward.  They  were 
kind,  friendly  people,  and,  like  other  families  so  situated, 
dispensed  a  generous  hospitality  in  those  early  days  when 
it  was  common  to  welcome  a  houseful  of  friends,  before 
the  mad  rush  for  wealth  and  display  had  cut  so  deep  into 
our  friendly  social  life. 

In  1825,  at  about  sixteen  years,  Abe  found  employment 
on  the  Ohio  Eiver,  not  far  from  their  home,  for  a  few 
months,  at  six  dollars  a  month.  This  was  his  first  work 
away  from  home,  when  he  took  up  the  hard  labor  of  run- 


116  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

iiing  a  ferry-boat  across  the  river  for  about  sixteen  hours 
a  day.  He  did  so  to  get  a  wider  knowledge  of  the  country 
and  the  people  near  them  at  least.  The  river  was  even 
at  that  day  full  of  Western  emigrants;  and  many  were 
crossing  over  from  Tennessee  and  Kentucky  in  search  of 
more  productive  lands.  This  experience  was  valuable;  for 
he  saw  a  great  many  people  in  the  time,  and  his  small  earn- 
ings furnished  the,  home  some  useful  articles,  some  writ- 
ing materials  for  his  own  use,  and  some  little  things  for  ap- 
parel, and  the  best  sight  of  the  world  that  he  had  had  up 
to  that  time. 

We  will  have  occasion,  as  we  proceed  to  take  into  care- 
ful consideration  his  schooling,  education,  and  training- — 
for  it  must  come  in  so  many  ways — that  a  single  reference 
would  be  no  more  than  opening  the  subject.  We  have  seen 
that  at  nine  to  ten  he  had  studied  and  understood  what 
he  studied,  and  never  gave  up  the  work  until  he  did  under- 
stand. At  ten  he  had  studied  and  memorized  a  great 
part  of  his  mother's  Bible,  iEsop,  "Pilgrim's  Progress," 
"Paradise  Lost,"  "Life  of  Washington,"  and  the  Statutes 
of  Indiana.  This  was  surely  progress,  and  for  a  boy  of 
twelve  it  was  as  much,  or  more,  of  real  learning  than  thou- 
sands of  accredited  scholars  now  know  or  understand. 

Prom  the  time  that  his  mother  taught  him  his  alphabet 
and  how  to  read,  which  must  have  been  as  early  as  his 
fifth  year,  in  Kentucky,  he  was  never  idle  or  unemployed 
when  he  could  get  a  book.  We  can  understand  something 
of  his  incentive  and  determination  to  know  by  his  walking 
several  miles  to  a  justice's  office,  that  he  might  spend  an 
hour  or  two  going  over  as  dull  and  uninteresting  a  subject 
as  the  Statutes  and  law  forms  kept  by  a  magistrate.  He 
sometimes  got  the  loan  of  the  book  for  a  few  days.  Some 
of  his  biographers  have  been  wise  enough  to  tell  us  that 
he  took  up  books  and  studies,  not  that  he  might  become 
learned  and  useful,  and  acquire  knowledge  for  the  love  of 


THE  MEN  OF  HI 8  TIME.  117 

it,  but  as  a  mechanic  does  his  tools — that  he  might  be  able 
to  better  his  condition. 

There  is  no  wonder  that  many  people  in  various  parts 
of  the  world  stand  in  doubt  as  to  the  knowledge  and  learn- 
ing of  Mr,  Lincoln,  when  such  botchery  and  misinforma- 
tion have  been  written,  bound  in  books,  shelved,  and  labeled 
as  history.  It  seems  that  there  are  schoolmen  from  uni- 
versities— not  moldering  away  like  the  old  monasteries,  but 
perhaps  more  antiquated,  if  possible,  in  ideas — who  affect 
to  believe  that  a  boy  of  nine  studied  the  Bible,  ^Esop, 
Bunyan,  Milton,  some  biography,  statutes  and  legal  forms, 
without  notable  intellectual  capacity.  Harmful  as  such 
veneered  ignorance  is,  and  delusive  as  it  will  be  to  many, 
their  deception  is  as  nothing  alongside  of  those  journeymen 
writers  who,  although  they  often  saw  him,  never  knew  his 
attainments  and  capacities,  or  ever  looked  into  the  won- 
derful soul  of  Abraham  Lincoln. 

He  had  some  schooling  in  Kentuck}^,  attending  short 
terms  when  teachers  held  winter  schools  at  Elizabethtown 
and  Hodginsville:  two  or  more,  one  Riney's,  the  other 
Hazel's,  and  at  least  three  in  Indiana  before  he  was  twelve, 
namely  Dorsey's,  Crawford's,  and  Swaney's,  attending  each 
as  well  as  he  could  through  a  winter's  term. 

He  was  a  favorite  with  all  his  teachers,  and  the  most 
diligent,  attentive  boy  in  any  school.  Hanks  often  said 
that  "Thomas  Lincoln  lumped  his  schooling  at  a  year,  but 
it  was  more,  and  that  Abe  always  went  to  school  as  long  as 
they  could  teach  hira  anything."  As  we  proceed,  it  will  be 
plain  enough  that  boy,  man,  and  leader,  he  was  one  of  the 
most  studious,  and  that  by  reason  of  patient  study  and 
persevering  labor  he  became  one  of  the  best-informed  men 
of  those  among  whom  he  lived  and  agreed  or  contended 
with.  A  learned  or  educated  man  is  not  a  known  and  fixed 
standard  or  quality.  A  collegiate  or  academic  course 
will  train  and  discipline  the  mind.    It  is  useful,  and  should 


118  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

be  every  one's  possession  who  can  get  and  master  it;  but 
education  is  the  work  of  a  lifetime.  "We  want  to  begin 
with  exact  knowledge  of  how  Mr.  Lincoln's  mind  was 
trained  and  started  on  the  road  to  knowledge,  follow  him 
along  step  by  step,  through  event  after  event  in  his  illus- 
trious career,  where  virtue,  knowledge,  and  strength  were 
elements  to  the  end. 

The  beginning  was  made.  His  mother  was  his  first 
teacher,  and  the  Bible  was  his  first  text-book,  and  held  its 
place  in  his  mind  throughout  his  life.  His  writing  and 
spelling  were  carefully  done,  and  accurate,  and  remained 
so.  He  was  clear,  exact,  positive,  and  strong  in  the  use  of 
language.  As  he  grew,  he  trained  himself  in  these  until 
he  came  to  a  style,  force,  and  elegance  that  resembled  the 
reasonings  of  Job  and  the  infinite  beauties  of  the  Psalms 
more  than  any  other  forms. 

His  methods  of  study  and  arrangement  of  subjects  were 
regular.  His  phraseology  was  selected  in  careful  estima- 
tion of  all  the  shades  of  meaning  he  desired.  His  points 
and  predicates  were  keen,  incisive,  and  strong,  and  the  force 
and  energy  of  expression  M'hich  he  always  sought  was  anal- 
ogous in  his  mind  to  the  powerful  work  of  his  hands.  Thus 
he  began  and  learned,  using  all  his  means  in  application, 
study,  and  thought,  and  so  he  perseveringly  continued,  al- 
ways seeking  the  instruction,  advice,  and  help  of  the  bright- 
est, wisest,  and  most  learned  people  about  him,  so  candid 
and  sincere  that  he  laid  no  claims  to  scholarship,  although 
he  acquired  and  possessed  the  knowledge  of  the  school- 
men, worked  out  through  his  own  laborious  system  of 
study. 

In  his  almost  faultless  form  he  wrought  out  periods 
of  sentiment,  pathos,  and  patriotism  that  will  live  with  the 
nation  and  its  literature — beautiful  thoughts,  so  richly 
clothed  in  harmony  and  force  that  a  new  world  makes  classic 
that   which   was   not   born   to    die.      The   ablest   men   and 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  119 

scholars  of  his  time  would  have  held  it  an  honor  to  help 
him;  but  the  heart  and  hand  that  could  lead  the  people 
was  inspired  to  master  and  express  his  work  and  purpose 
in  thought  and  passion  that  was  his,  that  will  be  burned 
into  men's  minds  through  centuries  till  all  men  are  free. 

During  the  high  water  in  the  spring  of  1838,  Mr.  Gentry 
employed  Abe,  then  past  nineteen,  to  accompany  his  son 
on  a  trip  with  a  flatboat  loaded  with  provisions  down  the 
Mississippi  River,  the  surplus  productions  of  the  region, 
to  market.  They  were  to  dispose  of  their  load  to  the  best 
advantage,  and  to  do  so  they  were  to  stop  at  all  the  towns 
and  landings  on  their  way  to  New  Orleans  for  final  desti- 
nation as  it  became  necessary.  The  voyage  was  successful 
in  every  way.  The  cargo  was  profitably  traded  and  sold 
and  managed  to  the  entire  satisfaction  of  Mr.  Gentry,  who 
complimented  the  boys  on  their  success. 

This  journey  was  a  school  of  observation  and  experience 
to  any  man  at  the  time.  The  rivers  were  full  of  the  traffic 
and  commerce  of  the  countrj^,  as  there  were  no  railways 
west  of  the  Alleghan}'  Mountains  up  to  1840.  And  all 
the  Western  commerce  was  upon  the  rivers.  There  were  a 
few  steamers  and  fiatboats,  barges  and  lesser  craft  in  in- 
creasing numbers,  as  they  passed  down  towards  the  Gulf. 
The  rivers  were  full  of  emigrants  pushing  westward  in 
search  of  homes  and  better  lands.  These  multitudes  were 
a  source  of  interest  to  every  one,  surely  so  to  an  inquisi- 
tively-turned boy  like  Abe. 

At  New  Orleans  he  saw  the  people  and  commerce  of 
the  outside  world.  It  was  small  then,  compared  with  other 
ports  and  its  own  importance  since;  but  there  were  people 
and  ships  and  business  with  other  nations  that  awakened 
his  mind  in  many  ways  to  a  broadened  and  wider  concep- 
tion of  our  country  and  its  affairs.  Above  all,  the  most 
striking  revelation,  the  deep  impression  on  his  mind,  that 
lasted  his  lifetime,  was  what  he  saw  of  slavery  in  the  city, 


120  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN.     ' 

on  the  vessels,  along  the  wharves,  at  the  auction-blocks,  and 
in  the  slave-pens.  He  saw  men,  women,  and  children  worked, 
driven,  and  lashed  like  oxen,  treated  like  beasts  of  burden, 
and,  worse  than  he  had  known  of  in  his  Kentucky  and  In- 
diana homes,  subject  in  every  way  and  all  the  time  to  the 
will  and  control  of  beastl}^,  passionate  men,  whose  deviltry 
and  lust  were  matched  in  brutal  strength  and  debaucheries. 
He  saw  families  put  up  for  sale  to  the  highest  bidder,  or 
separated  and  sold  as  cattle  in  the  market. 

He  saw  what  no  civilized  people,  or  half-civilized, 
should  permit  to  exist  for  one  moment  of  time,  the  slave- 
pens — polluted  dens  of  filth,  degradation,  and  iniquity  so 
deep  that  the  Negroes'  life  had  no  protection  outside  of 
its  money  value.  When  that  was  gone,  which  happened 
whenever  they  were  too  sick  or  infirm  to  sell,  murder  was 
as  common  as  robbery,  which  was  a  petty  offense  when  com- 
mitted against  a  Negro.  He  saw  with  his  own  eyes  these 
horrid  slave-pens,  where  men  and  women  cried  for  poison, 
where  an  old,  bright-eyed  woman  cried:  "Let  me  outen  dis 
den  bb  de  wickud,  whar  I  kin  wa'k  inter  de  watah  ob  de 
ole  Massasipy  Eibber,  an'  die  in  its  bressud  busum.  List'n 
to  de  words  ob  dis  pore  ole  wuman,  0  Lor',  an'  let  me  go!" 
He  saw  vice  so  low  as  to  be  without  a  rival.  The  tragedy 
of  slavery  before  him  in  diabolical  review  was  proof  that 
it  "was  the  sum  of  all  villainies."  He  saw  and  knew  that 
a  hell  existed  and  was  thriving  in  New  Orleans — no  mat- 
ter what  about  it  elsewhere. 

There  he  made  his  promise  to  God,  that  "If  I  live,  and 
as  I  do  live,  I  will  use  all  the  strength  of  my  mind  to  the 
best  advantage  for  the  abolishment  of  this  withering, 
damnable  curse."  These  were  brave,  blessed  words,  which, 
through  a  lifetime,  he  fulfilled,  amidst  difficulties  and  be- 
setments,  in  devotion  and  final  determination  and  triumph, 
such  as  could  not  have  been  achieved  by  any  other  man 
of  his  time. 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  121 

The  question  is  pertinent,  Did  this  revolting  sight  and 
experience  come  as  an  ordinary  experience,  or  was  the 
cause  of  his  seeing  this  and  the  sacred  promise  of  the  giant, 
impressionable  youth  deeper-seated  in  the  plans  of  Him 
that  rules  the  destinies  of  men?  Later  it  will  be  seen  that 
a  time  did  come  to  him  when  he  was  impressed  with  the 
sense  of  a  great  duty  resting  upon  him. 

The  voyage  down  the  river  and  the  return,  part  of  which 
thev  made  afoot,  were  of  incalculable  value.  He  had  seen 
much.  He  had  been  on  the  ground  that  General  Jackson 
and  his  hastily-gathered  volunteers  had  made  memorable 
and  historic  to  Americans.  He  had  passed  his  boyhood. 
He  had  seen  success,  a  world  of  striving,  busy  people.  His 
ambition  was  in  a  new  way.  He  returned  home  full  of 
the  purpose  to  find  occupation  on  the  river,  so  full  of  life 
and  activit}^,  if  his  father  would  yield  his  consent;  but 
the  father  reasoned  Abe  out  of  the  plan,  and  his  wise  coun- 
sel prevailed,  so  that  Abe  did  not  return  to  the  river  for 
work,  which  he  could  easily  have  found  because  of  his 
strength  and  cleverness  as  a  boatman. 

In  the  fall  of  1829  his  cousin,  John  Hanks,  for  whom 
Abe  had  warm  friendship,  gathered  up  his  family  and  all 
they  had  into  a  two-horse  wagon,  and  pushed  westward 
as  far  as  Macon  County,  Illinois.  He  believed  that  the 
Lincolns  could  do  better  there  than  it  was  possible  for 
them  in  Indiana,  so  that  later  in  the  same  fall  he  made 
them  a  return  visit,  and  urged  them  to  make  the  change. 
He  had  been  so  sure  of  their  coming  that  he  had  entered 
and  held  a  claim  for  them,  on  which  he  had  made  the  im- 
provements necessary  to  hold  it. 

Thus,  led  by  another  event  that  was  made  for  them, 
they,  too,  gathered  all  their  belongings,  and  journeyed 
westward  in  1830,  joining  John  Hanks  ten  miles  east  of 
Decatur,  on  the  Sangamon  Kiver.  Their  worldly  posses- 
sions were  small,  as  were  those  of  many  generous-hearted 


122  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

settlers  in  those  days;  but  they  thrived  and  were  seldom 
hungry  in  a  land  as  fertile  as  Egypt.  Here  they  prospered 
in  business,  with  a  currency  part  of  which  was  wolf-scalps 
and  'coon-skins,  of  more  "intrinsic  value"  than  the  paper 
dollars  which  men  are  killing  themselves  to  get  these  later 
days. 

The  Lincoln  family  left  Indiana  without  regret.  It 
had  been  the  field  of  their  incessant  and  persevering  labor 
for  about  fourteen  years,  where,  by  hard  labor,  they  had 
expected  to  build  up  and  eventually  own  homes  of  their 
own.  They  would  probably  have  succeeded  if  they  could 
have  reached  the  reward  of  the  hardest  toil  men  could 
endure.  Their  labor  was  like  that  of  those  all  about  them 
for  a  generation:  clearing  land  where  it  was  extravagant 
waste  and  destruction  to  clear  it,  while  at  the  same  time  the 
level  plains  and  prairie-lands,  which  were  ready  for  imme- 
diate cultivation  and  use,  were  neglected.  It  was  not  until 
after  1840  that  men  believed  prairie-lands  could  be  success- 
fully cultivated,  so  that  John  Hanks,  in  1829,  making  the 
best  selection  for  the  Lincolns,  selected  a  place  for  them 
in  the  timber. 

The  location  was  a  very  good  one.  After  years  of  hard 
grubbing  it  made  a  small  farm,  though  the  prairie  lands, 
which  they  avoided,  would  have  made  them  independent 
in  a  few  years.  Wisdom  is  of  slow  growth;  and  they,  like 
all  before  them,  settled  in  the  timber,  to  ''clear  out"  an- 
other farm,  as  they  had  already  done  in  Kentucky  and  In- 
diana, with  such  loss  of  time  and  labor  that  it  kept  them 
poor. 

In  the  fall  of  1830  they  packed  all  of  their  household 
goods  and  wares  into  a  large,  rough-boxed  country  wagon, 
which  Avas  drawn  by  two  yoke  of  oxen,  and  emigrated  about 
one  hundred  and  fifty  miles  northwestward.  There  were 
Thomas  Lincoln  and  wife,  her  two  daughters  and  families, 
who  were  married  in  Indiana,  Mrs.  Lincoln's  son,  and  Abe — 


TEE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  123 

six  of  them — besides  three  children.  They  had  some  horses 
and  cattle,  which  were  taken  with  them. 

They  were  leaving  Indiana  after  fourteen  years'  hard 
work  in  clearing  up  a  farm  of  over  twenty  acres,  with  little 
more  of  store  and  property  than  they  brought  with  them 
from  Kentucky;  but  they  had  reared  their  children  with 
good  habits,  ready  for  honest  labor,  healthy,  strong,  and 
rugged,  which  was  doing  well. 

The  farm  and  cleared  lands  of  over  twenty  acres  fell 
back  to  Mr.  Gentry.  Their  payments,  though  long-con- 
tinued, did  not  pay  the  purchase  price  and  all  the  interest. 
When  they  concluded  to  go  further  west,  there  was  no  other 
purchaser  than  Gentry.  Tliie  land  and  the  improvements 
and  the  benefit  of  their  labor  of  clearing  it,  if  it  was  a 
benefit,  went  to  him  at  the  price  he  was  willing  to  allow. 
The  settlement,  notwithstanding  their  fourteen  years  of 
saving  economy  and  grinding  toil,  left  them  no  more  than 
his  tenants. 

This  example  of  one  in  a  thousand  shows  how  well  prop- 
erty is  protected  in  our  laws  and  customs,  and  yet  how  ten 
times  the  value  of  the  land  may  be  paid  and  piit  upon  it, 
and  still,  if  the  full  purchase  price,  with  all  the  accruing 
interest,  is  not  discharged,  no  vested  right  is  acquired, 
not  even  in  the  work  of  building  and  paying  for  a  home- 
stead. The  value  of  the  land  which  the  Lincolns  had  from 
Gentry  was  not  above  two  dollars  an  acre  when  they  arrived, 
nor  more  than  five  when  they  left  it — forty  acres,  worth 
eighty  dollars  at  first,  two  hundred  dollars  at  the  close. 
Thousands  of  settlements  such  as  the  Lincolns  made  come 
and  pass  unnoticed,  while  we  truly  bemoan  the  fate  of 
evicted  Irishmen  on  their  native  sod. 

The  journey  of  men,  women,  children,  and  all  they  had 
was  made  in  easy  progress  in  some  two  weeks  or  more,  and 
they  were  all  happier  and  better  contented  when  they 
reached  the  new  settlement  and  joined  Hanks  on  the  Sanga- 


124  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

mon  Eiver — none  more  so  than  Abe;  for  they  were  always 
friends. 

There  was  one  incident  of  the  migration  which  Mr.  Lin- 
coln always  remembered,  to  which  he  sometimes  referred. 
His  stories  always  delighted  an  audience.  The  feeling  one 
had  after  the  story  was  told  was  pretty  well  described  by 
a  friend  who,  on  being  asked,  "How  did  you  like  Lincoln's 
story  in  his  address  last  night?"  replied,  "Why,  I've  been 
wanting  to  hear  him  tell  it  over  ever  since." 

In  a  speech  delivered  in  Chicago  early  in  the  stirring 
debates  over  the  "Kansas-Nebraska  Bill"  in  1854,  an  old 
friend  and  associate  of  the  Whig  party,  to  which  they 
belonged,  rose  in  the  hall  and  informed  Mr.  Lincoln  that 
"Mr.  Blank,  who  is  an  able  man  and  an  old-line  Whig,  stands 
neutral  on  the  great  question  of  slavery  extension,  now 
agitating  the  country.  If  he  is  present,  I  hope  that  he 
may  be  aroused  to  a  sense  of  duty  in  this  great  crisis." 

Mr.  Lincoln,  with  that  infinite  expression  of  humor 
which  neither  pen  nor  pencil  can  describe,  said: 

"This  reminds  me  of  an  accident  that  happened  when 
we  came  to  Illinois  in  the  fall  of  1830.  The  weather  was 
cold  for  the  season.  It  was  in  November,  cold  enough  for 
ice  to  freeze  every  night,  and  we  were  not  as  warmly  clad 
as  people  are  these  days;  but  our  work  kept  us  warm 
usually  by  keeping  us  busy.  In  an  accident  on  the  way 
I  lost  my  trousers,  which  were  so  torn  as  to  be  useless.  This 
was  a  misfortune  indeed;  for  I  had  no  other  pair,  and  it 
would  have  taken  a  day  or  two  to  make  any  sort  of  ones 
for  me,  as  we  were  moving  along.  No  other  man's  or  boy's 
clothing  would  fit  the  long,  lean  stripling  of  a  boy  which 
I  was.  The  predicament  was  necessitous:  trousers  of  some 
sort  had  to  be  found,  for  I  was  shivering,  with  the  torn  ones 
not  half  covering  my  limbs.  My  good  mother  ransacked 
the  wagon,  and  found  an  old  pair  of  my  father's.     They 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  125 

were  better  than  the  torn  ones,  and  were  drawn  on  over 
them.  The  legs  of  the  old  ones  were  cnt  off  below  the 
knees,  and  that  was  the  best  that  could  be  done  for  trousers 
for  me  until  a  pair  could  be  made.  After  all  that  ingenuity 
could  do,  my  legs  were  only  half  clad.  My  father  was  al- 
most a  foot  under  me  in  height,  and  his  legs  were  shorter 
in  proportion.  His  trousers  came  only  a  little  below  my 
knees.  My  shoes  were  low,  and  though  I  had  good,  warm, 
woolen  socks  of  my  mother's  knitting,  my  shanks  were  thin 
and  the  socks  were  loose  and  large. 

"I  walked  often  through  tangled  brush  along  the  road- 
side as  I  drove  the  oxen.  The  trousers  were  of  little  use 
as  covering  below  my  knees,  and  the  socks  slipped  down  on 
my  ankles,  and  my  long  shins  were  neutral,  neutral  ground 
in  the  frosty  November  air;  and  I  there  learned  by  experi- 
ence the  trials  and  discomforts  of  neutrality  and  the  un- 
pleasant situation  of  neutral  ground  or  neutral  space.  I 
am  sincerely  sorry,  and  know  that  I  can  sympathize  with 
our  friend  of  the  good  old  days  when  we  were  WTiigs,  as 
we  followed  those  truly  great  leaders,  Webster,  Clay,  Taylor, 
and  Scott.  I  hope  that  he  will  leave  his  doubtful  neutral 
ground,  and  join  us  in  the  great  cause  of  the  rights  of  men 
and  human  liberty,  and  not  be  freezing  as  my  lean  shanks 
did." 

Mr.  Blank  came  up  to  the  platform  after  the  meeting, 
shook  Mr.  Lincoln's  hand  in  a  sort  of  "conversion  to  the 
faith,"  and  remained  one  of  his  most  devoted  friends  and 
supporters  to  the  end. 

When  they  arrived  in  Macon  County  after  the  one  hun- 
dred and  fifty  miles'  journey,  they  found  that  John  Hanks 
had  cut  and  hauled  the  logs  and  some  lumber;  for  there 
was  a  sawmill  not  far  from  them  on  the  river.  With  the 
help  of  Hanks  and  the  party  of  six  men  they  were  not  long 
in  building  cabins;  first  one  for  Thomas  Lincoln,  and  for 


126  ABFAHAM  LINCOLN. 

the  other  families  afterward.  They  were  all  hard-working, 
persevering  people.  They  kept  to  their  labor  until  all  were 
comfortably  housed  in  their  new  cabins.  Fuel  was  hauled 
in,  as  the  weather  was  getting  cold.  It  was  well  that  they 
got  through  with  the  building  and  fuel  preparation  early 
in  December;  for  the  winter  of  1830-31  proved  to  be  the 
hardest,  longest,  and  had  the  most  snow  that  had  ever 
been  known;  and  it  has  been  designated  ever  since  as  "the 
cold  winter." 

A  heavy  snow  fell  about  the  middle  of  December.  Fu- 
rious storms  and  more  snow  followed  for  two  to  three 
weeks,  during  which  time  the  people  all  through  their  scat- 
tered settlements  were  kept  close  about  their  cabins  and 
barns  to  save  themselves  and  the  little  live  stock  they  had. 
The  snow  reached  a  depth  of  five  feet,  much  deeper  in  the 
little  valleys  and  where  it  made  drifts.  The  severe  cold 
continued,  and  paths  had  to  be  dug  about  their  premises. 
The  snow  packed,  and  roads  were  made  almost  as  solid  as 
ice,  and  so  remained  until  April,  two  weeks  after  the  snow 
had  melted  from  other  places. 

It  was  so  cold,  and  the  deep  snow  lay  so  long  that  three- 
fourths  of  the  game  perished  in  that  dreadful  winter.  To 
the  Lincolns  and  those  with  them  in  their  new  settlement 
it  was  one  of  the  severest  trials  of  their  lives,  as  it  was  to 
all  in  the  thinly-settled  State,  whose  population  was  one 
hundred  and  sixty  thousand  at  the  time. 

During  that  severe  winter,  Abe,  with  John  Hanks  help- 
ing him — who,  in  proof  of  good  faith,  helped  all  winter — 
split  the  rails,  cleared  the  land,  and  fenced  the  field  with 
the  famous  "walnut  rails,"  the  small,  fifteen-acre  farm  for 
Thomas  Lincoln,  his  first  home  and  farm  in  Illinois.  The 
trees  were  large  and  beautiful,  and  they  disliked  to  cut 
them;  but  it  was  the  best  and  most  conveniently-located 
place  for  the  field,  and  they  were  selected.  It  came  about 
in  the  forest  destruction  and  waste  of  timber  before  they 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  127 

would  risk  crops  on  the  rich  alhivial  prairies,  that  this  par- 
ticular destruction  and  these  "walnut  rails"  were  profitable 
far  above  the  value  of  the  land;  but  not  to  the  Lincolns. 

When  John  Hanks  walked  into  the  State  Convention 
in  the  earh^  summer  of  1860  at  Decatur,  ten  miles  from 
the  old  farm,  with  two  of  those  same  rails  on  his  shoulders, 
the  Convention  rose  to  their  feet,  stood  on  the  chairs  and 
benches,  filled  the  windows  and  platform,  went  wild  over 
their  great  State,  "Honest  Abe  Lincoln,"  and  the  "walnut 
rails."  The  Convention  enjoyed  the  most  glorious  hero- 
worshiping,  applauding  ten  minutes,  ever  had  in  any  political 
Convention  within  our  knowledge.  The  whole  body  of 
them  resolved  to  go  to  Chicago  and  make  the  Illinois  rail- 
splitter  "our  candidate"  for  the  Presidency.  The  world 
heard  of  these  rails,  and  they  rose  to  ten  dollars  a  rail,  and 
sold  fast  at  that,  until  the  market  was  oversold,  and  several 
farms  had  lost  their  walnut  fencing. 

So  many  of  Mr.  Lincoln's  friends — men  who  had  known 
him  intimately  for  years — were  connected  with  the  episode 
of  the  rails  from  the  beginning,  that  he  disliked  to  say  any- 
thing about  it,  and  never  did  publicly;  but  he  was  a  sin- 
cerely candid  and  truthful  man,  so  that,  when  he  learned 
how  rails  were  selling,  he  sent  for  a  friend  who  he  knew 
could  stop  it,  and  said:  "I  have  felt  that  this  thing  was 
overdone  from  the  start,  but  because  so  many  dear  friends 
have  been  concerned  in  it,  I  have  submitted;  but  now  I  am 
sure  it  ought  to  be  stopped;  there  are  too  many  'walnut 
rails'  for  sale.  It  is  too  much  of  a  strain  on  the  old  fence." 
The  rail-selling  was  soon  properly  restricted. 

The  Lincolns,  and  those  with  them,  endured  a  very  hard 
winter.  It  was  much  colder  than  they  were  used  to  or  had 
ever  experienced  in  Indiana,  which  was  better  protected  in 
those  days  with  its  heavy  forests,  whereas  Illinois,  with 
its  wide  prairies,  was  exposed  to  the  sweep  of  the  northwest 
blizzards,  as  it  is  now,  where  the  temperature  may  fall. 


128  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

in  their  sweep,  as  much  as  fifty  degrees  in  a  single  day. 
This,  "the  hard  winter  of  1830-31,"  should  not  be  confused 
with  "the  winter  of  the  sudden  change  in  1836,"  when  the 
temperature  fell  sixty  degrees  in  a  few  minutes.  Many 
were  frozen,  some  died,  thousands  of  animals  perished,  some 
were  frozen  in  the  mud,  swine  piled  on  each  other  in  heaps, 
and  were  choked  and  frozen,  with  sheeted  ice  all  over  them ; 
and  thousands  of  wild  birds  and  fowl  perished,  flying,  when 
struck  by  the  blizzard  of  rain  and  snow,  which  froze  as 
it  fell. 

The  work  of  clearing  the  fifteen  acres  in  that  long,  cold 
winter  was  hard,  continuing  labor,  ten  to  twelve  hours  a 
day,  as  long  as  they  could  see;  but  it  took  labor  such  as 
this,  with  unyielding  determination,  and  with  rude  tools, 
implements,  and  appliances,  which  were  the  best  and  all 
that  could  be  had,  to  open  up  the  farms  of  our  early  pio- 
neers, who  laid  the  foundations  for  the  amazing  develop- 
ment and  civilization  to-day.  It  was  well  that  these  two 
axmen — Lincoln  and  Hanks — cut  and  slashed  the  walnut 
trees  so  lavishly  through  that  cold  winter;  for  in  that  way 
they  got  the  fuel  that  made  the  roaring  fires,  the  piles  of 
burning  logs  that  kept  them  all  warm  through  it. 

In  1830  the  population  of  Illinois  was  heaviest  in  the 
counties  along  the  Ohio,  the  Mississippi,  as  far  north  as 
Quincy,  and  several  smaller  rivers,  when  two-thirds  of  the 
people  lived  below  the  line  of  Springfield,  running  east 
and  west.  The  first  capital  town  was  Vandalia,  sixty-five 
miles  southwest  of  Springfield.  The  first  was  then  near  the 
center  of  population.  Fayette  County,  in  which  it  was 
situated,  had  2,704.  Sangamon  County,  in  which  Spring- 
field is  located,  had  at  that  early  day  13,960.  The  fine 
timber  and  the  river,  which  was  then  a  much  more  impor- 
tant stream  than  ever  afterwards,  attracted  many  emigrants. 
Macon  County,  in  which  they  first  settled,  had  1,122.  Coles 
County,  in  which  the  family  made  their  permanent  home 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  129 

later,  was  not  then  organized.  Several  counties  along  the 
eastern  border,  as  far  north  as  Vermilion,  which  had  5,836, 
were  among  the  best  settled;  but  the  northern  half  of  the 
State  was  the  most  sparsely-settled  until  as  late  as  1835. 
From  that  date,  however,  a  large  emigration  came  in,  swell- 
ing to  the  moving  multitudes  who  have  been  streaming 
into  the  great  West  ever  since. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

SPRINGFIELD  was  made  the  county-seat  of  Sangamon 
County,  one  of  the  finest  bodies  of  land  in  the  State, 
about  1820.  John  Kelly,  a  venturesome,  roving  de- 
scendant of  the  Green  Isle,  had  settled  about  the  center 
of  the  county  on  Spring  Creek,  a  small  stream  running  into 
the  Sangamon  River  near  there.  When  the  commissioners 
met  to  locate  the  county-seat,  they  found  that  Kelly  had 
the  only  shelter  in  the  neighborhood.  Besides,  he  was  such 
a  Jolly,  good-hearted  fellow,  and  entertained  them  so  well, 
that  they  located  the  county  town  and  the  eventual  State 
capital  on  his  claim  at  Spring  Creek,  naming  it  Springfield. 

They  also  authorized  the  building  of  a  court-house  and 
jail.  Kelly,  being  the  oldest  inhabitant,  and  a  "promoter" 
even  at  that  early  day,  took  the  contract,  and  built  the 
two  log  cabins  that  were  used  for  those  purposes  for  many 
years,  at  the  moderate  cost  of  one  hundred  and  thirty  dol- 
lars; a  large  sum  of  money,  too,  when  corn  was  five  cents 
a  bushel  and  hogs  no  more  than  one  dollar  and  fifty  cents 
apiece. 

When  Kelly  made  his  improvement,  because  of  the  fine 
grass  and  the  cool  spring-water,  it  was  very  attractive  to 
deer  and  other  game.  He  often  killed  as  many  as  three  to 
four  deer  from  the  door  of  his  cabin  in  one  day.  Wild  tur- 
keys, geese,  ducks,  and  the  large  pheasants  or  prairie-chick- 
ens, were  in  such  abundance  that  until  the  severe  winter 
spoken  of  there  was  wild  game  in  supply  far  beyond  the 
wants  of  the  settlers  and  the  Indians  still  remaining  after 
the  War  of  1812. 

130 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  131 

The  sudden  change  of  December  20,  183G,  was  one  of 
the  most  remarkable  phenomena  in  severity  and  sudden- 
ness in  our  extremely  changeable  climate.  One  woman 
related  that  she  stepped  to  her  kitchen  door  to  empty  a 
basin  of  distiwater,  moderately  warm.  As  she  opened  her 
door,  a  piercing  blast  of  freezing  air  took  basin  and  water 
from  her  shivering  hand,  overturning  them,  and  carrying 
them  some  twenty  yards,  while  the  water  was  frozen  to 
ice  like  hail,  and  rattled  on  the  ground  as  it  fell.  The 
geese,  chickens,  and  all  manner  of  fowls,  walking  through 
the  wet,  muddy  barnyards,  were  caught  and  frozen  in  their 
tracks,  where  they  had  to  be  chopped  out  very  soon  or 
perish,  which  thousands  of  them  did  in  that  terrible  freeze. 

This  frightful  winter  storm  came  about  four  o'clock  in 
the  afternoon,  and  continued  its  frigid  destruction  through- 
out the  night,  with  increasing  coldness  and  a  wind  which 
no  animal  could  face  for  five  minutes  and  live.  One  said  that 
"zero  went  down  to  nowhar;"  another,  that  "things  kept 
cracking  and  breaking  all  around  me  as  if  the  timber  was 
all  a-breakin'  to  pieces  and  fallin'  all  around  us."  Another 
said  that  he  was  only  a  few  hundred  yards  from  his  house, 
chopping,  in  his  shirt  sleeves,  when  it  came  with  a  terrible 
wind  and  the  roar  of  a  tornado.  He  ran  to  his  house  with 
all  his  speed  and  energy,  but  he  was  knocked  down  twice  by 
what  appeared  furious  blasts  loaded  with  ice  and  hail;  and 
when  he  reached  home,  he  fell  on  the  floor,  almost  lifeless, 
with  both  hands,  his  ears,  nose,  and  face  badly  frozen — 
all  in  five  minutes. 

They  had  few  thermometers  of  any  kind,  consequently 
the  change  was  estimated.  There  had  been  no  severe  winter 
up  to  the  time.  There  had  been  some  frosts,  and  there 
had  been  some  ice  the  night  before;  but  the  ground  was 
muddy,  and  the  streams  had  not  been  frozen  over  when 
the  great  blizzard  came;  and  the  next  day  there  was  ice 
six  inches  thick  on  the  running  water  in  the  streams. 


132  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

Dr.  Morean,  in  Springfield,  had  a  thermometer,  and  tried 
to  measure  the  fall  of  temperature.  He  related  that  ''I 
heard  the  whizzing  of  the  storm,  wrapped  up  hurriedly,  hung 
my  thermometer  on  the  open  porch,  when  it  marked  about 
forty  degrees  Fahrenheit.  In  the  few  seconds  I  watched 
it  the  mercury  sank  below  zero.  The  furious  blasts  drove 
me  in.  I  returned  again  in  a  few  moments,  when  I  heard 
the  broken  thermometer  rattling  over  the  frozen  ground. 
The  air  seemed  so  terribly  cold,  and  the  winds  in  such  a 
tempest,  that  I  guessed  it  at  another  fall  of  fifty  degrees. 
I  fully  believed  that  the  temperature  fell  as  low  as  thirty- 
five  to  forty  degrees  below  zero  in  less  than  half  an  hour. 
Everything  about  us  corroborated  it.  Some  mercury,  which 
freezes  at  forty-two  degrees  below  zero,  was  frozen  solid 
next  morning  in  a  small  bottle  I  had  on  the  outside  of 
my  window." 

One  man  on  horseback,  two  or  three  miles  out  near 
Clinton,  in  DeWitt  County,  had  a  terrible  experience,  and 
barely  escaped  with  his  life.  He  was  on  the  open  prairie 
when  he  heard  the  roar  of  the  storm.  He  turned  his  horse 
from  facing  it,  and  sought  shelter  under  a  little  rise  in  the 
ground  and  some  heavy  grass. 

He  saw  some  animals  fall  not  far  away,  when,  they  were 
stricken  with  the  storm,  as  though  they  had  been  felled  with 
an  ax.  At  this  he  jumped  from  his  horse,  which  soon  fell 
on  him,  stunned  and  dazed,  as  the  others  appeared  to  be. 
He  was  lying  on  the  windward,  between  the  horse's  legs, 
which  gave  him  some  protection.  He  soon  realized  that 
the  horse  was  about  dead,  and  that  he  was  getting  dizzy 
and  stupid — sure  signs,  as  he  realized,  that  he  was  freezing. 
He  was  aware  that  his  situation  was  desperate,  and,  without 
being  able  afterwards  to  tell  just  how  he  accomplished  the 
work  in  his  almost  lifeless  condition,  but,  having  a  large 
hunter's  knife,  he  disemboweled  the  horse,  and  crawled 
into  the  still  warm  cavities  of  its  thorax  and  abdomen.     It 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  133 

was  well  that  his  friends  made  search  as  soon  as  they  could 
wrap  themselves  to  breast  that  awful  storm.  They  found 
him  about  nightfall,  when  the  wind  had  ceased  a  little, 
in  some  two  hours,  more  dead  than  alive.  By  persevering 
work  and  skillful  management  he  recovered.  His  clothing 
was  cut  and  sliced  off.  He  was  rubbed  and  dried  with  ice 
applied  to  his  face  and  extremities,  carefully  used,  to  save 
them.  He  lost  part  of  his  hands  and  feet,  but  lived  for 
many  years,  a  relic  of  the  furious  storm  in  the  "sudden 
change."  It  is  one  of  the  sad  remembrances  of  my  boy- 
hood to  have  seen  and  talked  to  this  badly-crippled  man, 
"who  lived  after  he  was  cut  out  of  a  frozen  horse." 

In  the  severe  weather  that  followed  this  storm  the 
iiround  was  covered  with  ice  for  weeks.  Deer  and  animals 
of  all  kinds  perished  in  many  places;  for  there  was  neither 
food  nor  water  left  for  subsistence,  and  the  little  game 
that  was  left  from  the  previous  hard  winter  of  1830-31  was 
caught  easilv,  or  died  from  starvation. 

One  humane  incident  following  this  storm  deserves 
to  be  remembered.  While  the  deer  were  chased,  run  down, 
and  killed  for  their  skins,  John  Weedman,  Sr.,  one  of  the 
earliest  settlers  of  DeWitt  County,  made  a  deer-park  of 
some  forty  acres,  built  it  hurriedly,  and  strengthened  it 
when  time  and  opportunity  came.  He,  with  two  or  three 
of  his  oldest  sons,  of  whom  there  were  ten  altogether — 
hardy,  athletic  men — scoured  the  prairies  about  them,  and 
brought  into  their  park  over  two  hundred  chased  and  starv- 
ing deer. 

They  kept  them  in  the  beautiful  forest  park  for  several 
years  near  Farmer  City,  where  thousands  of  people  came 
and  saw  the  fine  herd  of  clean,  neat-limbed  animals — the 
prettiest  of  the  wood  and  field.  They  thrived  and  dlH 
well.  They  bred  and  multiplied,  and  were  kept  for  fresh 
meat  as  occasion  required,  well  fed  and  well  cared  for;  but 
iu  this,  as  in  many  other  things,  nature  has  its  compensa- 


134  ABE  AH  AM  LINCOLN. 

tions.  These  pretty  deer,  the  nice  herd  that  came  in  a 
storm,  went  away  in  another  storm,  and  vanished. 

A  tornado-like  storm  in  the  summer  along  in  the  forties 
came  unexpectedly.  The  rails  were  old,  and  a  break  was 
made  in  them  by  the  tempest,  and  the  deer  all  escaped. 
The  Weedmans  caught  and  killed  a  few,  but  did  not  recover 
enough  of  them  to  justify  keeping  them.  Most  of  them 
dispersed  in  the  storm.  Few  were  ever  heard  of  afterwards. 
If  the  kind-hearted  example  of  "Uncle  Johnnie  Weedman" 
had  been  generally  pursued,  we  could  have  preserved  thou- 
sands of  the  useful,  fair,  and  handsome  animals  of  our 
forests  and  plains,  and  we  would  have  been  a  kinder-hearted 
people,  as  he  and  his  patriotic  sons  were,  perhaps,  by  rea- 
son of  this. 

In  the  early  settlement  of  Central  Illinois,  the  region 
in  which  Mr.  Lincoln  grew  so  rapidly  to  favor  and  a  well- 
rounded  manhood — the  Sangamon  Eiver  country — was  made 
up  principally  of  small  towns  and  scattered  farms  on  the 
highest  land  in  and  along  the  borders  of  the  timber.  It 
is  a  low,  level  basin,  which  at  that  time  was  more  than  half 
covered  with  water  for  several  months  every  year,  and  in 
"wet  years"  all  the  time.  There  were  great  stretches  of 
swampy  lands  on  both  sides  of  the  Sangamon  River  through 
several  counties,  and  the  same  conditions  existed  further 
east  along  the  headwaters  of  the  little  streams  in  parts  of 
Champaign,  Vermilion,  Edgar,  Coles,  and  what  is  now 
Douglas,  Counties,  with  abundance  of  water  and  many 
natural  reservoirs  throughout  these  level  plains. 

The  Sangamon  Eiver  was  relatively  an  important 
stream,  so  much  so  that  up  to  1835-40  the  people  believed 
that  with  small  expenditure  it  could  be  made  one  of  the 
useful  waterways  for  the  interior  of  the  State,  and  ren- 
dered navigable  to  some  point  in  the  vicinity  of  Spring- 
field. In  support  of  this,  the  Illinois  was  navigable  for 
boats  of  some  kind  as  far  up  as  Joliet,  only  forty  miles 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  135 

southwest  of  Chicago  or  Lake  Michigan;  for  Chicago  was 
then  a  little,  inconsequential  town,  not  nearly  as  thrifty 
and  prosperous  as  Pekin  and  Peoria,  on  the  Illinois  Kiver. 

The  Kaskaskia,  very  much  such  a  stream,  was  used  for 
many  years  as  a  small  navigable  waterway,  and  the  Sanga- 
mon, in  proportion  to  the  population,  was  used  as  much  by 
floating  craft,  consisting  of  flatboats,  rafts,  skiffs,  and  canoes, 
which,  in  a  new  country,  almost  destitute  of  roads  and  bridges 
for  outside  communication  or  commerce,  were  the  chief 
avenues  for  trade  and  barter.  Local  matters,  the  surround- 
ings and  home  influences,  have  much  to  do  in  forming  the 
habits  and  dispositions  of  men,  as  well  as  hi  shaping  the 
course  and  direction  of  business  and  human  affairs. 

There  was  no  consideration  of  the  effects  of  cultivation 
on  these  streams,  and  the  many  means  of  drainage  that 
became  a  necessity  as  soon  as  farms  were  made.  This  went 
on  all  over  the  interior,  and  hundreds  of  swamps  and  little 
bodies  of  water  were  drained,  thus  lessening  the  reservoirs 
which  held  the  water  supplies  of  the  Sangamon  and  other 
rivers  after  the  spring  freshets  were  over.  These  drain- 
ings  were  little  heeded,  and  the  belief  generally  prevailed 
that,  with  some  small  help  from  Congress,  the  State,  and 
the  energy  of  the  people  along  tlie  river  to  demonstrate  its 
feasibility,  navigation  of  the  Sangamon  was  not  only  prac- 
ticable, but  a  necessity. 

This  developed  a  local  question,  with  far-reaching  re- 
sults, to  the  advocacy  of  a  system  of  "internal  improve- 
ments" because  of  the  public  demand.  This  had  much  to 
do  in  shaping  the  career  of  many  able  men  all  over  the 
great  West.  There  were  necessities  for  roads,  bridges, 
and  highways  for  traffic,  springing  up  from  thousands  of 
new  settlements.  That  the  Nation  could  undertake  and 
build  all  of  them  was  a  popular  belief  at  home,  and  the 
appeal  for  help  would  have  prevailed  in  Congress;  but  when 
they  were  half  considered,  it  was  easily  seen  that  there  were 


136  ABBAHAM  LINCOLN. 

no  means  available  for  such  a  system  otherwise  than  by  di- 
rect taxation.  This  was  not  desirable  by  any  means  as  a 
party  policy,  especially  so  to  any  party  in  office,  as  the  Demo- 
cratic party  was  without  adequate  means  to  carry  on  the 
work. 

The  people  along  the  water-courses  were  compelled  to 
depend  on  their  own  resources  for  their  improvements,  which 
they  made,  in  many  instances,  without  Congressional  legis- 
lation or  help  from  their  States.  After  long  discussion, 
heated  party  disputes,  and  much  wrangling  in  Congress,  it 
was  determined  it  would  not  be  wise  to  inaugurate  a  system 
of  internal  improvements  supported  by  direct  taxation.  This 
was,  in  many  ways,  a  timid,  if  not  a  cowardly,  evasion  of 
plain  and  manifest  duty,  that  brought  the  invariable  punish- 
ment of  hesitation  when  courage  and  action  were  sternly 
demanded,  and  had  much  to  do  as  the  beginning  of  the 
alternative  policy  of  squandering  the  continental  area  of 
public  lands  for  half-built  railroads  and  unfinished  water- 
ways. 

It  was  many  years  before  the  true  situation  was  real- 
ized that  there  was  such  a  boundless  region  in  a  state  of 
nature,  and  that  it  would  take  generations  of  men  to  im- 
prove and  reduce  it  to  the  best  uses  of  mankind  in  place  of 
the  few  years  in  which  the  hard-working,  zealous  pioneers 
fully  expected  to  accomplish  the  great  work. 

We  have  written  at  some  length  because  the  enthusiastic 
discussion  through  which  the  question  passed  had  much  to 
do  in  forming  the  habits,  pursuits,  and  character  of  the 
boy  who  had  reached  his  majority  in  1830,  the  year  in  which 
he,  with  the  help  of  John  Hanks,  got  the  Lincoln  family 
comfortably  settled  on  their  little  clearing  in  Macon  County. 
Feeling  that  he  was  "of  age,"  he  and  Hanks  began  their 
search  for  active  employment  best  suited  to  their  capacities 
and  inclinations. 

That  Abe  was  thoughtful  and  studious  is  shown  by  his 


THE  MEN  OE  HIS  TIME.  137 

seeking  the  river  occupation.  Hanks  said:  "Abe  could  out- 
talk  any  man  in  our  parts  on  internal  improvements  and 
river  business  the  first  winter  after  they  came  to  Macon 
County."  Hence,  in  the  spring  of  1831,  they  found  a  some- 
what venturesome  trader,  merchant,  and  stockdealer — Den- 
ton Offut — in  the  vicinity  of  Springfield,  with  whom  they 
made  a  bargain  to  take  a  flatboat  of  produce  and  sundry  ar- 
ticles for  sale,  as  he  would  supply  them  with,  down  the  river 
as  far  as  New  Orleans,  if  necessary,  to  make  profitable  dis- 
posal of  them. 

It  was  not  a  happen-so  or  hazardous  venture  that  took 
Abe  into  this  second  trading  expedition  down  the  lower 
river.  His  first  one  had  been  something  of  a  success.  He 
received  more  than  ordinary  wages,  and  saw  much  of  the 
world  for  a  growing-up,  inquisitive  Western  boy. 

In  1831-32  he  fully  believed  that  the  Sangamon  could 
be  made  navigable,  and  as  fully  believed,  with  his  neigh- 
bors, that  Congress  should  provide  means  for  the  improve- 
ment of  our  Western  waterways  as  certainly  as  harbors  and 
inlets  on  the  Atlantic.  He  had  seen  the  river-freighting 
business  profitably  carried  on  for  years  before  he  came  to 
Illinois,  on  the  Kentucky,  the  Ohio,  some  other  smaller 
streams,  and  on  the  lower  Mississippi.  With  these  ideas 
in  full  control,  strong,  ambitious  man  that  he  was  in  the 
beginning  of  his  career,  he  left  his  neighborhood  in  search 
of  this  kind  of  employment. 

He  knew  that  the  Sangamon  River  had  been  used  for 
flatboat  navigation  to  some  extent,  and  that  if  sufficient 
water  could  be  provided  by  any  sort  of  system,  a  useful  and 
profitable  business  could  be  established,  which  their  ex- 
periment would  determine.  Full  of  ambitious  hopes  three 
of  them — Abe,  Hanks,  and  John  Johnston,  the  foster 
brother — made  their  bargain  with  Offut  to  take  the  boat 
for  fifty  cents  a  day  for  each,  as  wages,  and  the  contingent 
interest  of  twenty  dollars  apiece,  if  half  of  the  profits  aggre- 


138  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

gated  that  amount,  or  their  proportionate  share  up  to  that 
limit. 

When  the  ice  broke  up  in  March,  these  three  ambitious 
men  walked  thirty  miles  northwest  to  Jamestown,  the  near- 
est navigable  point  on  the  river  to  Springfield,  where,  by 
agreement,  Offut  was  to  have  his  boat  and  cargo  ready  for 
embarkation  and  progress  gulfward. 

Their  surprise  was  great  in  learning  "that  not  a  lick 
had  been  struck  towards  building  the  boat  or  picking  up 
the  produce."  The  disappointment  was  unexpected  and 
severe  to  all  of  them,  and  Hanks  said:  "We  would  have 
given  up  the  whole  thing  if  it  had  not  been  for  Abe.  He 
proposed  that  if  Offut  would  stir  round  and  get  in  the 
produce,  we  would  build  the  boat,  and  we  did  build  it  in  a 
little  over  two  weeks,  taking  the  trees  from  the  stump, 
when  'most  everybody  round  there  thought  sure  it  would 
take  us  a  whole  month." 

They  were  delayed  and  disappointed,  but  through  the 
indomitable  perseverance  of  Abe  the  boat  was  built  and 
loaded  and  pushed  off  from  the  Jamestown  landing  before 
the  first  of  April.  It  was  a  little  late  in  the  season,  but 
the  strong  will  and  determination  of  the  master  of  the 
rough-looking,  but  strongly-built  boat  was  compensation  for 
many  defects  and  delays. 

At  Rutledge's  mill,  near  New  Salem,  in  Menard  County, 
about  twenty  miles  down  the  river,  they  found  the  mill- 
dam  chute,  or  water-opening,  some  three  feet  narrower 
than  the  boat.  The  disaster  was  serious  at  the  stage  of 
water  and  the  far-advanced  season,  disappointing,  and  fore- 
boding total  loss  of  boat  and  cargo.  Offut  came,  and  the 
whole  of  Salem's  two  hundred  inhabitants  turned  out  to 
see  the  boat  dammed  in,  firmly  held  behind  the  tremendous 
breastwork  of  logs,  rocks,  and  earth,  and  likely,  as  most  of 
them  said,  to  remain  there,  or  sink  to  the  bottom. 

Offut  and  some  of  their  crew  despaired;  but   Abe  did 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  139 

not  for  a  moment.  He  planned,  and  when  he  was  ready,  he 
shoved  to  the  opposite  shore  from  the  mill,  and  began  un- 
loading; but  the  hands  were  inexperienced,  and  they  un- 
loaded the  forward  end  too  fast.  The  rear  end  sank  under 
the  deep  water  behind  the  dam,  and  almost  capsized  it. 
This  it  would  have  done  had  it  not  been  for  the  instant 
action  and  herculean  strength  of  Abe,  who  jumped  into  the 
water,  and  held  the  boat  to  its  position  close  against  the 
dam  with  his  own  tremendous  power  until  it  was  righted. 
They  unloaded  it,  and  when  done  they  pushed  the  empty 
boat  over  the  dam,  where  there  was  about  two  feet  of  water 
running  over  it.  They  pumped  the  water  out  and  reloaded 
it  below,  and  proceeded  on  their  way  rejoicing.  The  whole 
town  of  New  Salem  voted  Abe  a  hero,  and  such  he  truly  was 
at  that  early  day,  in  every  inch  of  his  majestic  stature  of 
six  feet  four  inches.  His  reputation  grew  and  waxed  strong 
in  this  town,  which  was  to  be  his  home  the  succeeding  three 
years,  after  which  both  Abe  and  the  town  "departed." 

Offut  remarked  some  years  afterwards,  but  after  several 
disappointments  in  business,  "that  the  town  seemed  to  be 
there  and  the  chute  too  narrow,  just  to  give  Abe  Lincoln 
a  start." 

They  floated  and  passed  down  the  river,  going  all  the 
way  to  New  Orleans  with  nothing  as  serious  or  dangerous 
as  the  passage  at  Eutledge's  mill.  Their  trip  was  success- 
ful, enough  so  for  each  to  receive  the  twenty  dollars  in 
addition  to  his  wages.  This  was  Lincoln's  second  journey 
to  New  Orleans,  when  he  was  again  horror-stricken  at  sights 
too  common  to  be  avoided,  gangs  of  men  and  women, 
chained,  up  and  down  the  wharves  at  New  Orleans. 

They  saw,  too,  public  sales  of  men  and  women  where 
they  were  stripped  and  examined,  with  the  careless  bru- 
tality "stirring  up"  and  looking  at  cattle.  Abe  again  visited 
"the  pens."  Returning  to  his  friends,  he  denounced  slavery 
with  all  the  earnestness  and  strength  of  expression  of  which 


140  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

he  was  a  master.  Hanks  said:  "His  talk  agin  slavery  right 
down  thai  amongst  it  reminded  me  of  our  good  old  deacon, 
hack  in  Indiana,  accusin'  the  people  of  thar  wickedness 
afore  thar  face,  an'  backin'  it  up  readin'  from  Skriptur'  as 
he  went  along.  By  them  days  he  conld  talk  as  well  as  any- 
body, not  exceptin'  the  biggest  preachers,  and  we  had  some 
good  ones.  We  were  afeared  of  gettin'  into  trouble  about 
his  talkin'  so  much,  and. we  coaxed  him  with  all  our  might  to 
be  quieter-like  down  thar,  for  it  wouldn't  do  any  good 
nohow." 

Hanks  believed  that  it  was  on  this  trip  that  Abe's  mind 
was  first  aroused  against  slavery,  but  it  was  more  of  a  cor- 
roboration following  his  first  awakening,  three  years  before, 
which  has  been  related.  There  has  been  some  controversy 
and  difference  of  opinion  as  to  the  time  when  Mr.  Lincoln 
was  first  aroused  against  the  enormities  of  the  slavery  sys- 
tem. Some  have  placed  it  on  the  date  of  this  last  flatboat 
journey  to  New  Orleans,  which  Hanks  seemed  inclined  to 
believe;  but  Hanks  was  little  of  a  reasoner.  He  heard  Lin- 
coln's fiery  denunciation,  which  aroused  him  for  the  first 
time,  and  naturally  it  came  to  him  that  both  of  them  had 
realized  its  horrors  at  the  same  time;  but,  as  already  re- 
lated, Mr.  Lincoln  had  seen  and  understood  it  as  well  pre- 
viously. 

itfor  is  it  probable  that  his  beliefs  and  convictions  on 
slavery  were  suddenly  formed.  A  young  boy  of  his  habits 
and  thirst  for  knowledge,  who  had  carefully  read  and  studied 
his  mother's  Bible  three  times  over  with  her  help  by  his 
tenth  year,  must  have  held  strong  opinions  in  early  life 
against  slavery,  which  grew  with  his  strength  and  manhood. 
In  all  his  private  life  there  was  nothing  more  entertaining 
or  deeply  pathetic,  than  his  consideration  of  Moses  as  a 
leader  of  his  people,  and  their  wonderful  deliverance  from 
bondage.  He  grew  to  calm,  deliberate  judgment  through 
the  most  patient  inquiry  and  the  investigation  of  every  fact 


THE  MEN  OF  HTS  TIME.  141 

and  circumstance  within  his  reach.  It  was  during  this  voy- 
age down  the  Sangamon,  tiding  liis  boat  over  sandbars  and 
the  many  obstructions  of  the  shallow  stream,  that  a  plan 
came  to  his  mind  to  buoy  vessels  over  such  places  by  string- 
ing bags  of  air  along  each  side,  dropping  and  holding  them 
under  water  when  the  low  places  where  reached.  Afterwards 
in  1849,  while  a  member  of  Congress,  he  had  a  device  for 
carrying  out  his  plan  patented.  The  plain,  hand-made  model 
of  his  invention  is  still  in  the  Patent  Office  at  Washington. 
No  use  was  ever  made  of  the  plan,  because  it  seemed  to  be 
more  convenient  to  run  barges  or  small  craft  along  with 
heavily-laden  vessels  on  our  inland  shallow  waters,  where 
they  were  lashed  to  the  sides  and  used  as  lighters  to  raise 
them  and  help  them  to  carry  freight  over  the  lowest  places. 
These  were  usually  convenient,  and  when  so  were  always 
ready  for  use.  Mr.  Lincoln's  device  was  a  sensible  one,  but 
the  barges  and  lighter  craft  were  more  ready  at  hand. 

On  their  return  in  the  summer  they  walked  most  of  the 
way  to  their  homes.  They  were  convinced  that  boating  on 
the  Sangamon,  with  its  shallow  bed  and  its  uncertain  stages 
of  water,  was  too  precarious  to  promise  profitable  occupation. 
Thomas  Lincoln  and  his  good  wife,  hs  the  family  grew  up 
and  left  them,  were  not  satisfied  with  the  lonesome  location 
in  Macon  County.  The  settlement  was  remote  from  any 
other,  and  the  younger  members  of  the  family  having  sepa- 
rated in  search  of  employment,  the  elder  people,  father  and 
mother,  with  some  of  their  grandchildren,  moved  eastward 
some  seventy  miles  into  Coles  County,  on  Goose-neck  prairie, 
where  they  bought  a  small  farm  and  made  it  their  home. 

Thomas  Ijincoln  lived  there  until  1851,  when  he  died 
at  about  seventy  years  of  age.  Abe's  filial  care  and  attention 
to  his  parents,  and  his  continuing  help,  that  in  age  they 
might  enjoy  all  the  comforts  that  were  within  his  means, 
were  worthy  of  the  man  and  his  dutiful,  generous  heart.  If 
we  could  look  in  and  know  what  he  contributed  and  how 


142  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

cheerfully  it  was  supplied,  it  would  reveal  a  fountain  of  real 
goodness,  as  surprising  and  remarkable  as  the  exercise  of 
his  wonderful  talents  astonished  and  delighted  our  people. 

When  he  earned  a  dollar,  its  first  use  was  to  make  these 
old  people  comfortable.  It  would  be  tedious  to  relate  even 
a  part  of  the  information  that  was  commonly  known  and 
told  on  the  subject.  He  supplied  means  for  them  over  and 
over  again;  he  never  called  it  giving  or  a  mistake  when  he 
knew  that  in  mistaken  confidence  these  might  be  misapplied, 
and  again  and  again  when  he  believed  they  would  be. 

He  was  liberal  with  and  helped  his  foster-brother  John- 
ston, when,  if  he  had  labored  and  economized  like  Abe,  he 
could  have  been  the  most  helpful  to  their  parents,  for  he 
was  spending  nothing  to  get  an  education,  Abe  helped  him 
until  he  realized  that  he  was  doing  him  more  injury  than 
good  in  encouraging  his  idleness,  when  he  wrote  him  two 
strong,  fatherly,  more  than  brotherly,  letters,  admonishing 
him  of  what  had  been  done,  closing  with  the  emphatic  advice 
and  direction,  "Go  to  work  is  the  only  cure  for  your  case." 

His  good  step-mother  lived  in  her  age  after  his  martyr- 
dom. Her  tribute  to  him  was  the  best  that  her  words  could 
fashion,  expressive  of  a  mother's  feeling:  "I  had  a  son  John 
who  was  raised  with  Abe.  Both  were  good  boys;  but  I  must 
say,  both  now  being  dead,  that  Abe  was  the  best  boy  I  ever 
saw,  or  ever  expect  to  see.  He  never  gave  me  a  cross  word 
or  look,  and  never  refused,  in  fact  or  appearance,  to  do  any- 
thing I  asked  him.  His  mind  and  mine,  what  I  had,  seemed 
to  run  together.  He  was  delighted  when  we  were  happy 
and  contented." 

Thomas  Lincoln  passed  away  full  of  years  and  honest 
toil,  a  man  whose  labor  and  industry  were  unselfishly  given 
for  the  welfare  of  his  family  and  friends,  who  shared  his 
homelike  fare  and  hospitality.  Some  have  written  him  a 
"restless,  thriftless  man,  who  was  always  ready  to  move." 
He  worked  hard  for  a  lifetime,  pioneered  his  way  into  two 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  143 

great,  growdng  States;  to  the  last  one  where  his  son  would 
win  more  than  a  cro^Ti.  They  lived  sparingly  sometimes; 
but  the  Master  fed  them,  and  they  grew  to  be  stalwart  men — 
the  son  until  he  had  no  equal  in  all  the  land — and  in  their 
generous  or  most  careful  living  no  one  ever  left  their  cabin 
door  either  cold,  unsheltered,  or  hungry. 

Thomas  Lincoln  "did  not  do  much,"  as  some  have  written 
of  him.  Who  does?  Is  it  not  something,  a  grand  some- 
thing, to  be  the  father  and  rear  to  such  majestic  manhood 
the  man,  prophet  and  leader,  Abraham  Lincoln?  If  we  could 
open  the  seals  of  the  great  Book  and  read,  what  would  we  see 
of  Thomas  Lincoln,  and  what  of  the  scribblers  who,  as  they 
said,  knew,  and  who  wrote  "that  he  was  a  thriftless  man?" 

Abe  remained  with  his  parents  a  few  weeks  in  the  fall 
of  1831,  when  he  returned  to  the  vicinity  of  Springfield  and 
the  river  towns  north  and  northwest.  He  had  become  a 
famous  chopper,  able  for  the  work  of  two  or  three  ordinary 
men,  and  he  easily  found  several  jobs  in  the  winter  in  cabin- 
building  and  the  improvements  then  becoming  common. 
He  made  a  little  something  in  money  out  of  this  hard  work, 
and  as  frugality  was  a  necessity  then,  he  saved  during  the 
year,  including  his  river  trip,  something  over  one  hundred 
dollars. 

Early  in  the  spring  of  1832  he  selected  New  Salem  for 
what  he  expected  to  be  his  permanent  home.  He  had  been 
in  the  village  only  a  few  months  when  the  governor  called 
for  several  companies  of  volunteers  for  service  in  the  Black 
Hawk  Indian  War,  then  in  progress  in  the  northern  part  of 
Illinois,  and  further  north  and  west.  He  felt  that  being 
young,  strong,  and  healthy,  and  not  in  any  permanent  em- 
ploj'ment,  it  was  his  duty  to  go,  and  he  promptly  enlisted. 

As  it  has  always  been  when  there  has  been  need  and  a 
call  has  been  made  for  volunteers  by  the  proper  authorities, 
the  call  for  men  to  resist  the  invasion  of  Black  Hawk,  his 
associated  tribes  and  warriors,  was  responded  to  with  the 


144  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

patriotic  alacrity  that  has  alwaj's  characterized  the  Amer- 
ican people.  Almost  one  hundred  assembled  in  Springfield 
under  the  call.  Abe  Lincoln  was  one  of  them,  and  was  more 
anxious  to  be  elected  captain  of  the  company  than  he  was 
to  any  other  office  until  1860.  He  said:  "I  had  high  regard 
for  the  office  of  governor,  and  for  Governor  Eeynolds,  gov- 
ernor at  the  time;  but  I  was  better  pleased  in  being  elected 
captain  than  I  would  have  been  to  be  elected  to  his  office." 

The  old  "Ranger  Governor"'  Avas  a  Democrat  all  over, 
not  only  as  a  partisan;  but  he  assured  the  volunteers,  per- 
sonally, those  in  Springfield,  that  their  selections  for  officers 
would  be  commissioned  without  any  kind  of  interference. 
This  promise  he  faithfully  performed,  and  in  every  possible 
way  contributed  to  their  comfort  and  welfare,  going  with 
them  himself  on  the  expedition. 

An  energetic  young  man,  Kirkpatrick,  was  anxious  for 
and  labored  incessantly  to  obtain  the  position  of  captain. 
He  knew  everybody,  and  in  all  the  preliminary  work  and 
talk  about  the  company  and  its  officers  he  had  much  advan- 
tage, for  Abe  was  little  known,  and  so  sincerely  modest  about 
it  that  he  had  only  spoken  to  two  or  three  members  of  the 
company.  To  those  he  had  only  said  that  he  would  like 
to  be  captain,  and  that  he  thought  that  he  was  as  well  en- 
titled to  it  as  Kirkpatrick. 

So  little  had  been  said  about  his  ambition,  that  Avhen 
the  time  for  the  election  came  he,  like  most  of  them,  sup- 
posed that  he  had  very  little  if  any  chance;  but  as  Hanks 
said,  "Kirkpatrick  helped  Abe  out."  He  was  eager  and  out- 
spoken. Taking  his  position,  he  addressed  the  company, 
saying:  "I  suppose  it  is  as  good  as  settled  who  is  to  be  your 
captain,  but  it  will  be  better  to  go  through  the  form.  All 
who  are  for  me  will  form  in  line  behind  me.  If  there  is 
any  other  candidate  he  can  step  forward,  and  you  who  favor 
him  can  do  likewise."  This  he  spoke  very  confidently,  sure 
of  his  election ;  but  Abe  was  not  to  be  defeated  so  easily,  and 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  145 

stepped  ont,  erect,  stalwart,  and  almost  defiant  at  the  slight- 
ing allusion,  but  saying  only,  "Come  on,  boys,"  in  his  mellow, 
persuading  voice,  that  no  one  ever  surpassed. 

When  the  division  was  made,  more  than  eighty-five  of 
the  ninety-three  had  lined  up  with  Abe  for  captain.  The 
election  was  of  incalculable  benefit  to  him.  It  gave  him 
strength  and  rejoutatiou  among  the  people,  whose  admira- 
tion kept  pace  with  the  knowledge  they  gained  of  the  re- 
markable youth,  and,  perhaps  the  best  of  all,  it  gave  him 
confidence  in  himself,  an  element  of  character  as  necessary 
as  courage. 

The  company  was  organized  and  hurried  forward,  for  the 
emergency  was  a  serious  one.  Kirkpatrick  submitted  grace- 
fully, and  served  with  the  rest  as  faithfully  as  any  one  of 
them.  The  several  companies  assembled  at  Kichland,  Sanga- 
mon County,  on  the  21st  of  April,  1832,  where  they  were 
mustered  into  the  Fourth  Illinois  Volunteers,  commanded 
by  Colonel  Samuel  Thompson. 

As  soon  as  the  regiment  was  organized,  they  began  their 
march  to  join  General  Whiteside's  command.  Moving  out 
of  Eichland  on  the  27th,  they  started  on  their  march,  west 
and  a  little  nortb,  to  Yellow  Banks,  on  the  Mississippi  River, 
arriving  there  about  May  3d,  after  a  march  of  over  one  hun- 
dred and  fifty  miles.  They  encountered  several  streams, 
which  they  were  compelled  to  bridge  before  crossing,  one 
swollen  to  over  one  hundred  and  fifty  feet  wide.-  This  they 
bridged  and  crossed  in  three  hours,  with  their  command  of 
two  thousand  men,  and  without  loss  and  little  damage  to 
their  slender  supply-train. 

Governor  Reynolds,  one  of  the  hero  pioneers  of  the  State, 
accompanied  the  expedition,  and  shared  all  the  hardships 
and  privations  of  the  campaign.  When  they  reached  the 
Mississippi,  the  vessel  from  the  lower  river  with  supplies  had 
not  arrived.  The  country  was  sparsely  inhabited,  and  with 
their  own  supply  about  exhausted  in  the  march,  they  resorted 
10 


146  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

to  the  American  privilege  of  "grumbling  for  cause"  against 
all  who  were  responsible  for  such  inexcusable  lack  of  prep- 
aration. 

The  governor  took  his  share  of  the  blame.  They  "for- 
aged" the  country  in  every  direction,  and  the  governor  and 
ever)'^  one  else  that  had  supplies  divided  as  long  as  anything 
was  left;  nevertheless  they  lived  three  days  on  less  than 
one-half  day's  rations.  .  At  the  end  of  this  it  was  a  camp  of 
hungry,  starving  men.  The  steamer  finally  arrived  loaded 
down  with  supplies  and  provisions  on  the  6th  of  May.  The 
camp  resounded  with  cheers  and  rejoicings,  as  though  they 
won  a  victory,  and  the  troubled  governor  with  the  rest  was 
relieved.  He  was  always  held  in  high  esteem,  which  in- 
creased after  this  for  his  care  and  attention  to  the  wants 
of  these  men,  and  his  patient  endurance  of  all  the  hardships 
of  the  campaign. 

The  pinching  want  for  food  and  three  days'  starvation 
of  some  of  them  was  never  forgotten.  In  later  years,  when 
Mr.  Lincoln  was  President,  his  instructions  were  emphatic 
to  keep  subsistence  well  up  with  the  armies;  for  he  well 
remembered  the  sufferings  of  hungry  men  in  camp.  After 
being  supplied  and  provisioned,  they  moved  forward  up  the 
east  side  of  the  river  to  the  mouth  of  Eock  Eiver,  now  Rock 
Island,  about  ninety  miles.  From  this  they  kept  on  their 
forward  movement  up  the  south  side  of  Rock  River  to  the 
vicinity  of  Dixon,  where  they  united  with  General  Atkinson, 
in  command  of  the  regular  forces  operating  against  the 
Indians. 

Before  joining  Atkinson,  Majors  Stillman  and  Bailey 
Joined  them  with  two  battalions  of  mounted  men.  They 
were  well  equipped  and  supplied,  and  not  worn  out  like 
Whiteside's  command,  which  had  marched  over  three  hun- 
dred miles,  and  whose  supply-train  had  not  arrived.  These 
horsemen  had  not  seen  enough  service  to  make  them  pru- 
dent. Their  ambition  for  "a  fray"  with  the  Indians  outran 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  147 

their  judgment,  very  much  to  their  sorrow  as  the  result 
proved,  in  expecting  easy  triumph  over  Black  Havtic,  one  of 
the  most  experienced  chieftains  of  his  race. 

Governor  Reynolds  yielded  to  their  desires,  and  per- 
mitted an  advance  into  the  Indian  camp.  They  came  upon 
an  outpost  of  the  Indians,  which  they  assaulted,  vigorously 
driving  them  back  on  their  main  camp,  some  half  mile  or 
more,  killing  two  or  three  of  them,  and  wounding  several 
more.  The  Indians  fled  so  rapidly  before  the  attack  that 
Stillman's  men  supposed  it  was  a  complete  defeat  of  the 
Indians,  and  that  they  had  won  a  victory  and  "had  them 
on  the  run." 

They  were  full  of  enthusiasm  and  excitement,  rejoicing 
over  Black  Hawk's  easy  defeat.  Thus  they  were  scattered 
along  the  half-mile  of  the  approach  to  near  the  main  Indian 
camp,  not  in  any  military  form  or  where  they  could  be 
assembled  in  line  at  once  as  soldiers  should  be  in  the 
face  of  an  enemy,  but  in  all  kinds  of  disorder.  A  prelimi- 
nary skirmish  in  which  they  were  victorious,  made  them 
careless  when  all  of  them  should  have  been  in  line,  compact 
and  ready  for  the  resisting  blows  which  their  advance  had 
provoked. 

It  was  late  in  the  evening,  in  the  dull  fading  light,  the 
time  when  an  Indian  is  best  ready  for  battle.  In  this  con- 
fusion and  disorder  these  volunteers,  brave  men  enough 
when  well  led  and  commanded,  misconceived,  or  forgot  for 
a  few  moments,  the  strength  of  columns  ready  for  action, 
and  the  never-varying  necessity  that  a  soldier  in  war  should 
bo  ever  ready  for  duty. 

Black  Hawk  with  a  sudden  "whoop,"  an  Indian's  slogan 
that  flies  on  the  wind,  assembled  several  hundred  warriors, 
and  led  them  in  a  furious  counter  assault  against  the  re- 
joicing pursiiers  of  their  retreating  outer-guard.  The  cav- 
alrymen were  sitting  easily  on  their  horses,  without  orders, 
straggled  out  to  a  single  line  and  a  few  groups,  when  from 


148  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

behind  every  tree  and  bush  and  little  hill  or  bunch  of  grass 
there  broke  on  these  confident  victors  a  crackling  rifle-rattle, 
deadly  and  at  close  range,  blazing  on  them  a  well-directed 
fire  on  their  front  and  along  both  flanks  to  the  rear. 

The  doubling  back  and  doubling  on  each  other  of  men 
and  horses  crowding  back  and  inward  in  surging,  tangled 
masses  was  frightful.  The  men  were  in  a  panic,  for  there 
was  nothing  to  do,  as  they  thought,  but  to  run  wherever 
they  could  for  safety.  There  was  no  one  in  sight  to  com- 
mand, and  not  a  dozen  men  in  hearing  to  obey.  There  was 
no  plan  of  action,  and  they  were  in  no  condition  to  execute 
it  if  there  had  been.  There  was  nothing  to  be  gained  where 
they  were  for  the  time  no  more  than  targets  for  the  In- 
dians' close-killing  fire. 

The  confusion,  wild  in  the  beginning,  grew  wilder  still 
as  men  and  horses  crowded  and  jammed  in  upon  one  an- 
other. They  became  an  easier  mark  for  the  closer-flying 
bullets,  when,  too,  the  horsemen  could  make  little  defense  on 
untrained  and  panic-stricken  horses  against  an  enemy  double 
their  number  firing  from  ambush.  The  horses  reared  and 
plunged  and  ran.  The  men  were  good  horsemen,  and  held 
their  seats  fairly  well,  but  the  beasts  in  their  fury  opened 
the  wav  to  the  rear,  stamoeded,  and  in  their  maddened 
flight  saved  Stillraan's  men,  all  but  eleven  killed  in  as  many 
minutes,  and  as  many  wounded.  Black  Hawk  had  planned 
for  their  complete  destruction,  and  came  near  accomplish- 
ing it. 

Stillman's  run  should  have  been  a  lasting  warning  and 
example,  which  it  has  not  been;  for  a  hundred  such,  differ- 
ing little  from  it,  have  happened  since.  Black  Hawk,  born 
in  1768,  died  in  1838,  was  chieftain  in  succession,  to  be 
leader,  king,  and  statesman  for  his  people  for  fifty  years. 
He  fought  the  "white  men"  from  1804  to  his  death,  because, 
as  he  said:  "My  people  were  robbed  of  their  lands  in  the 
council  where  they  gave  the  white  men  our  lands,  seven 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  149 

hundred  miles  on  both  sides  of  the  Mississippi,  north  from 
near  Quincy,  and  north  and  west  to  the  great  mountains. 
The  white  men  made  our  chiefs  drunk  on  their  fire-water, 
and  in  their  drunken  white  man's  spree  took  our  lands. 
They  agreed  to  give  one  thousand  dollars  a  year  while 
their  drunken  chiefs  live;  but  this  they  can  annul  in  another 
drunken  council.  Black  Hawk  will  never  agree  to  this. 
He  will  fight.  His  people  own  their  lands,  and  no  drunken 
council  can  sell  them  without  their  consent."  He  joined 
Britain  against  us  in  1812,  and  led  in  other  uprisings  against 
the  ''whites,"  firmly  believing  in  the  rights  of  the  Indians 
and  in  fighting  for  their  lands  and  heritages,  as  any  other 
brave,  untutored  leader  and  people  would  have  done.  Their 
uprisings  were,  of  course,  suppressed,  and  their  lands  all 
taken,  right  along  as  a  policy,  by  the  advancing  tide,  by  the 
migrating,  moving  population  that  was  taking  the  continent. 

The  narrow,  land-robbing  policy  that  prevailed  against 
Black  Hawk  and  the  Sac  and  Fox  tribes  was  the  same  that 
has  been  pursued  against  all  the  Indians  from  the  first  settle- 
ments of  the  Colonies, — a  faithless  barter  for  their  lands; 
a  faithless  compliance  with  the  one-sided  treaties ;  and  a  war 
of  extermination  to  enforce  the  land-plundering  schemes,  in 
which  thousands  of  appointees,  agents,  camp-looters,  and 
various  listed  beneficiaries  made  fortunes  in  the  ordinary 
progress  of  the  plan,  and  greater  ones  in  war,  whenever  the 
Indians  took  up  arms  in  defense  of  their  lands  and  homes 
and  against  the  policy  of  conquest  and  extinction  of  their 
race. 

The  plea  for  all  these  exterminating  wars  against  the 
savage  owners  of  the  continent  was  found  in  the  butcheries 
of  non-participating  settlers  by  these  maddened,  furious 
wild  men,  fighting  out  their  system  against  more  powerful 
invaders.  Penn  founded  and  made  a  Commonwealth,  and 
neither  fought  nor  robbed  the  aborigines  he  found  in  its 
"sylvan"  forests. 


150  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

The  campaign  against  this  great  Red  Man  in  1832,  in 
which  Captain  Lincoln  and  his  company  participated,  was 
his  last  one.  Black  Hawk  was  terribly  defeated,  his  warriors 
were  slaughtered  without  mercy,  and  the  remnants  routed 
at  Bad  Axe,  August  21st.  He  was  captured  a  few  days  later, 
and  carried  to  Washington  in  triumph,  where  he  told  his 
and  his  people's  story  in  emphatic  language,  if  not  in  the 
elegant  forms  of  courtly  evasion.  To  President  Jackson  in 
erect,  defiant  attitude  and  address  he  said:  'T  am  a  man, 
and  you  are  another.  I  did  not  expect  to  conquer  the  white 
people.  I  took  up  the  hatchet  to  avenge  injuries  which  could 
no  longer  be  borne.  Had  I  borne  them  longer,  my  people 
would  have  said  Black  Hawk  is  a  squaw;  he  is  too  old  to  be 
chief.  He  is  no  Sac.  This  caused  me  to  raise  the  war- 
whoop.    I  say  no  more  of  it ;  all  is  known  to  you." 

He  and  the  remnants  of  the  once  powerful  tribe  were 
placed  on  a  reservation  near  Fort  Des  Moines,  where  he  died 
at  seventy,  held  by  many  to  be  the  last  great  prophet,  king, 
and  chieftain  of  his  race. 

At  the  expiration  of  the  two  months,  the  time  for  which 
Governor  Reynolds  had  called  out  the  Illinois  troops,  General 
Whiteside's  command  of  two  regiments  and  some  cavalry 
were  mustered  out,  including  Captain  Lincoln's  company. 
General  Atkinson's  arrival  with  something  near  a  brigade 
of  regular  troops  was  sufficient  force  to  fight,  but  principally 
to  follow  a  few  hundred  defeated  savages  and  capture  them. 
According  to  the  old  plan,  they  were  followed  and  well-nigh 
obliterated,  with  their  Canadian  British  allies,  at  Bad  Axe 
and  Wisconsin  Falls  in  August. 

Captain  Lincoln,  Major  Stuart  (afterwards  his  law  part- 
ner). General  Whiteside,  and  others  re-enlisted,  and  formed 
a  "spy  company"  of  scouts,  which  served  some  thirty  days 
longer.  Their  period  of  service  passed  also  before  the  clos- 
ing battles,  and  the  last  of  them  were  mustered  out  at 
WTiitewater,  Wisconsin,  June  16  to  20,  1832,  when  Robert 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  151 

Anderson,  later  of  Fort  Sumter,  then  a  lieutenant  of  artil- 
lery, mustered  out  of  service  with  others  "Private  A.  Lin- 
coln, of  Sangamon  County."  These  discharged  volunteers, 
Lincoln  being  one  of  them,  and  always  one  of  the  jolliest, 
best-natured,  and  most  resourceful  among  them,  paddled 
and  pushed  and  walked  their  three  hundred  miles  home. 

Mr,  Lincoln's  military  career  was  short,  and  thai  it  was 
not  brilliant  was  no  fault  of  his.  No  one  who  ever  knew 
him  doubted  his  courage  or  capacity.  In  order  to  help  all 
he  could,  he  remained  in  service  longer  than  his  company, 
and  as  long  as  his  services  were  desired,  when  to  do  so  he 
re-enlisted  as  a  private  soldier.  The  service,  small  or  great, 
was  one  of  the  most  pronounced  achievements  of  his  rising 
progress.  His  distinction  as  captain  marks  the  rise  of  Lin- 
coln as  one  of  commanding  importance,  and  one  he  was  en- 
titled to  because  of  his  character  and  fitness,  and  was  sus- 
tained, as  "when  the  wicked  rise  men  hide  themselves ;"  but 
.when  Lincoln  rose  the  people  saw  an  honest  man. 

It  brought  him  at  once  to  the  knowledge  and  favorable 
acquaintance  of  full  three  hundred  men,  leaders  and  to-be- 
leaders  of  the  growing,  powerful  Western  Commonwealth, 
"the  richest  one  in  all  the  plain."  He  had  been  a  captain, 
and  they  found  that  was  only  part  of  what  he  could  be  and 
not  be  "above  himself"  in  position.  He  had  endeared  him- 
self to  all  there  was  of  New  Salem,  and  was  making  himself 
by  this  service  the  same  to  Springfield  and  the  whole  county. 

He  always  underrated  his  work.  He  was  so  candid  and 
sincere,  that  he  seemed  to  delight  in  his  exuberant  humor  to 
expose  the  exaggerations  or  sophistries  of  overtold  military 
achievements  and  renown,  as  unmercifully,  too,  as  those  of  a 
man  whom  he  respected  as  well  as  he  did  Lewis  Cass. 

In  referring  to  his  service  in  the  Black  Hawk  campaign 
in  Congress  in  1849,  one  of  the  raciest  bits  of  humor  in  all 
our  history,  he  said:  "Mr.  Speaker,  I  am  a  military  hero. 
In  the  days  of  the  Black  Hawk  War  I  fought,  bled,  and  came 


152  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

away.  I  was  not  at  Stillman's  defeat;  but  I  was  about  as 
near  it  as  General  Cass  was  to  Hull's  surrender,  and,  like 
him,  I  saw  the  place  very  soon  afterwards.  It  is  quite  cer- 
tain that  I  did  not  break  my  sword,  for  I  had  none  to  break ; 
but  I  bent  my  musket  pretty  badly  on  one  occasion.  If 
General  Cass  went  ahead  of  me  in  picking  whortleberries, 
I  guess  I  surpassed  him  in  charges  on  the  wild  onions.  If 
he  saw  any  live,  fighting  Indians,  it  was  more  than  I  did; 
but  I  had  a  good  many  bloody  struggles  with  the  mosquitoes, 
and,  although  I  never  fainted  from  loss  of  blood,  I  can  truth- 
fully say  that  I  was  often  very  hungry.  Mr.  Speaker,  if  ever 
I  should  conclude  to  doff  whatever  our  democratic  friends 
may  suppose  there  is  of  'Black  Cockade  Federalism'  about 
me,  and  thereupon  they  shall  take  me  up  as  their  candidate 
for  the  Presidency,  I  protest  that  they  shall  not  make  fun 
of  me  as  they  have  done  of  General  Cass,  by  attempting  to 
write  me  into  a  military  hero." 

It  was  in  August  or  September,  1831,  that  Abe  left  his 
father's,  to  seek  a  home  and  business  of  his  own.  He  quite 
naturally  returned  to  New  Salem,  where  he  was  acquainted 
with  everybody.  He  found  Offut  still  in  business  of  several 
kinds,  merchandising,  milling,  and  all  kinds  of  trading,  for 
he  was  venturesome,  and  willingly  undertook  any  kind  of 
barter  or  trade  that  had  promise  or  prospect  of  success. 

Abe  became  a  clerk  in  his  store  about  September,  where 
he  remained  most  of  the  time  until  the  next  April,  1832, 
when  he  enlisted  and  became  captain  of  his  company  as  re- 
lated. Offut  was  his  constant  helper  and  friend.  He  was 
a  man  who  heartily  enjoyed  the  rough,  wild  fun  of  the 
strong-limbed  pioneers  about  him,  and  encouraged  them  in 
much  of  their  merry-making  at  the  expense  of  timid  and 
foppish  men  and  "town  fellers  who  felt  above  them." 

Offut  liked  Abe,  and  was  soon  more  firmly  attached  to 
him  on  account  of  his  studious  habits,  his  capacity,  and  in- 
tegrity.   He  soon  learned,  too,  the  truth  of  Abe's  wonder- 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  163 

ful  strength,  suppleness,  and  dexterity,  and  that  in  the  rough 
tumbling,  wrestling,  and  ''knock-downs"  that  occurred  so 
often,  almost  certainly  every  Saturday  afternoon,  about  his 
store,  he  would  be  a  match  for  any  two  or  three  of  them. 
Knowing  this  so  well,  he  dissuaded  most  of  these  "rowdy 
fellows"  from  taking  Abe  through  the  "rag  and  wrastle" 
initiation,  which  every  "new  feller"  had  to  take  and  endure 
in  some  way. 

Offut  urged  this  because  he  knew  that  Abe  very  much 
disliked  such  rough,  rowdy  fun,  that  his  habits  were  studi- 
ous, that  he  had  the  manner  and  inclination  of  a  gentleman, 
that  he  was  sober  and  temperate  in  all  his  ways  and  living, 
and,  though  possessing  enormous  strength,  he  had  no  desire 
to  exercise  it  on  his  fellow-men,  and  that  he  would  not 
do  so  except  in  urgent  necessity. 

Offu't's  persuasions  were  sufficient  for  all  but  "the  Clary 
boys  from  Clar/s  Grove,"  and  one  of  their  friends,  Arm- 
strong, of  strong  and  powerful  build,  the  neighborhood's 
"belted  champion."  They  caught  Abe  on  the  streets  of  the 
village,  an  easy  thing  to  do,  for  he  never  avoided  any  one. 
Armstrong  assaulted  him  furiously,  striking  him  two  or  three 
heavy  blows  on  his  side  before  he  realized  his  situation; 
when  he  did,  he  stretched  out  his  powerful  right  arm,  seized 
Armstrong  by  the  throat  in  a  grip  as  firm  and  unyielding 
as  the  clutch  of  an  iron  vise,  and  held  him  at  arm's  length 
against  a  wall;  choking  and  making  him  gasp  for  breath,  in 
which  condition  by  signs  he  gave  up  the  struggle,  and  was 
asking  for  mercy. 

The  other  five  were  ready  to  join  in  the  assault;  but 
Armstrong  waved  them  off,  which  surprised  them.  When 
Abe  let  go,  Armstrong  took  his  hand  in  the  warmest  friend- 
ship, and  was  ever  after  truly  his  friend.  Turning  to  the 
crowd,  he  said:  "Boys,  you'll  never  want  to  feel  the  grip 
of  that  hand  but  once.  He  could  have  piled  all  six  of  us 
in  that  corner  in  six  minutes  or  less.    It 's  mighty  well  we 


154  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

got  off  as  well  as  we  did,  with  no  bones  broken."  It  was 
well  that  Armstrong  gained  the  sympathy  of  Lincoln's  great 
heart,  for  it  came  about  in  after  years  that  in  masterly  un- 
ravelings  of  false  testimony  he  saved  Armstrong's  son  from 
conviction  for  murder. 

Abe  was  so  good-natured  about  the  "fracas"  that  they 
all  quit  friends,  not  by  any  concessions  on  Abe's  part  nor 
any  overbearing  conduct.  He  turned  to  them,  and  gave  a 
little  lecture  on  good  behavior,  which  made  them  all  better 
men  and  his  friends  for  life.  One  of  them  telling  of  it  after- 
wards, feeling  as  they  all  did,  said:  "When  Abe  told  us 
what  we  orter'  do,  and  war  n't  a  bit  mad  about  our  waitin' 
for  him,  and  showed  up  right  thar  such  a  gentleman,  we  just 
cried  and  made  friends,  and  we  've  been  fur  him  ever  since 
agin  the  world."  He  had  the  strength  of  a  giant,  and  the 
good  sense  with  it  not  to  use  his  marvelous  power  for  the 
destruction,  but  for  the  betterment  of  his  fellow-men. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

THEEE  were  many  incidents  and  happenings  of  interest 
to  Abe,  and  about  him  from  his  location  in  New  Salem, 
in  August,  1831,  to  the  next  August,  when  he  returned 
from  the  Black  Hawk  War.  It  was  one  of  the  formative 
periods  for  the  turning  and  directing  of  his  future  life  and 
character.  His  habits  were  good.  He  had  improved  his 
mind  to  the  full  extent  of  his  opportunities.  He  had  health, 
strength,  and  capacity  for  any  occupation  in  life  that  might 
open  for  him.  He  was  temperate  and  industrious.  He  knew 
all  through  his  youth  that  heavy  responsibilities  rested  upon 
him,  which  helped  to  give  him  his  studious,  almost  melan- 
cholic turn  of  thought.  He  had  at  this  time  the  additional 
reason  for  industry  and  economy  that  his  parents  were 
growing  in  years,  and  were  in  condition  that  required  his 
help. 

The  question  came  to  him,  as  it  does  to  every  young  man 
at  the  outset  of  his  career,  Could  he  mix  and  mingle  with 
people  in  the  business  or  occupation  he  might  choose,  and 
endure  the  hard,  daily  battle  through  which  all  who  succeed 
must  pass  and  suffer,  and  preserve  his  habits,  industry,  and 
integrity  of  character,  by  which  he  had  grown  to  such  prom- 
ising manhood?  The  result  of  these  pertinent  inquiries  was 
an  important  concern  with  him  at  New  Salem,  and  our 
highest  duty  now  is  to  show  that  he  not  only  sustained 
himself,  but  that,  surrounded  by  the  rough  experiences  of 
frontier  life,  he  grew  stronger  and  better,  more  influential 
and  powerful  in  the  cause  of  right  and  justice,  in  every  work 
or  pursuit  which  he  undertook. 

156 


156  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

He  soon  grew  to  such  distinct  and  positive  character, 
that  in  his  first  year  he  became  known  as  "honest  Abe," 
a  distinction,  too,  which  he  held  among  the  pioneers  of 
Central  Illinois,  who  knew  him  well.  This  he  not  only  held, 
but  before  he  was  forty  years  of  age  he  was  graduated  into 
"Honest  Old  Abe,''  a  title  of  respect  and  endearment  which 
could  only  be  appreciated  as  it  was  intended  and  used  by 
those  familiar  with  the  sturdy  character  and  heroic  industry 
of  men,  as  faithful  in  labor  and  exposure,  as  they  were  up- 
right and  fearless  in  duty  or  danger.  He  used  all  his  powers 
of  friendly  persuasion,  as  well  as  his  strength,  so  skillfully 
and  well  to  preserve  the  peace,  that  he  became  an  authority 
on  the  subject,  whose  findings  and  judgment  could  always 
be  enforced. 

Instances  were  common  where  he  was  called  on  to  settle 
difficulties  between  angry  disputants,  in  some  of  which  a 
grasp  and  stroke  or  two  became  necessary  to  shake  the  sense 
into  them.  A  peacemaker  who  could  make  peace  was  there, 
but  usually  his  plain,  friendly  advice  to  carry  on  their  sports 
with  moderation,  and  to  make  it  the  object  of  their  lives  to 
grow  to  be  better  men  every  day  they  lived,  was  all  that  was 
needed  after  he  had  gained  his  uncontested  leadership  among 
them.  It  would  have  been  easy  for  him  to  have  won  great 
distinction  in  contests  of  activity,  dexterity,  and  strength. 
He  often  lifted  as  much  as  other  men,  with  the  man,  or  his 
weight,  added.  He  could  throw  a  twenty-pound  hickory 
maul  twice  as  far  as  any  one  else. 

He  was  something  of  a  wrestler,  but  avoided  the  repu- 
tation of  becoming  one  as  best  he  could.  While  on  the 
Indian  campaign  he  found  himself  gaining  more  notoriety 
as  one  than  he  desired.  One  day,  when  he  and  the  most 
"expert  tripper  and  wrestler"  in  the  command  were  having 
a  trial,  both  fell  at  once.  Abe  right  away  conceded  him  to 
be  the  champion,  when  at  the  same  time  a  comrade  said, 
"Abe  could  have  picked  him  up  and  carried  him  off  the 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  157 

ground."  But  he  was  tired  of  the  sport  such  as  it  was,  and, 
disliking  the  reputation  more,  he  in  this  way  avoided  both. 

He  was  so  careful  and  scrupulous  in  all  business  trans- 
actions, that  several  times  he  made  long  walks  to  the  coun- 
try, after  night  when  there  was  no  other  time,  to  rectify 
mistakes  where  errors  had  been  made  in  making  change  or 
overcharging,  and  to  take  home  packages  left  by  their 
owners,  through  no  fault  or  neglect  of  any  one  but  them- 
selves. 

One  incident  of  more  than  ordinary  importance  occurred 
during  the  winter  and  spring  of  1833.  In  pursuance  of  the 
plan  to  open  the  Sangamon  River  for  navigation,  efforts 
were  made  in  many  directions  to  secure  the  good  will  and 
co-operation  of  many  influential  people,  and  especially  the 
steamboatmen  of  the  western  waters,  many  of  whom  were 
appealed  to.  Finally  Captain  Vincent  Bogue,  of  Cincinnati, 
consented  to  investigate  the  river,  and  after  a  great  deal  of 
''stir  and  announcement"  in  the  West,  and  especially  so  at 
Springfield,  where  it  was  written  up  as  a  sure  opening  of  the 
river,  started  on  his  voyage  from  St.  Louis. 

The  Springfield  Journal  held  it  to  be  the  most  auspicious 
event  in  the  history  of  the  town  and  the  whole  region  round 
about,  which  it  would  have  been  if  the  hopes  of  those  ad- 
venturous boatmen  and  the  people  had  been  fulfilled.  Abe 
being  the  most  experienced  navigator  of  the  Sangamon 
was  wanted,  and  he  was  ready  to  aid  in  the  enterprise  in 
every  way  in  which  he  could  contribute  anything  toward  its 
success.  He  did  not  have  much  faith,  as  he  expressed  him- 
self after  his  trip,  which  has  been  referred  to.  The  bed  of 
the  river  was  too  wide.  The  region  it  drained  was  small, 
so  that  with  its  shallow  bottom  it  was  only  navigable  at  all 
during  floods  and  freshets;  but  having  very  low  banks  the 
stream  broadened  to  a  mile  or  more  in  high  water,  hence  its 
navigation  was  an  uncertain  and  precarious  venture  at  the 
best.     The  ponds  and  lakes  were  being  drained  out  as  the 


158  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

country  settled  up,  and  there  was  no  doubt  that  as  fast  as 
the  watery  areas  were  cultivated  and  drained,  the  water- 
supply  would  become  less  and  less;  after  further  inquiry  into 
the  subject,  there  seemed  little  hope  that  Congress  would 
do  much,  if  anything,  for  the  improvement  of  a  small  stream 
like  that,  when  such  enormous  expenditures  for  that  pe- 
riod were  necessities  for  the  improvement  of  the  thousands 
of  miles  of  Western  rivers,  with  abundant  water  for  navi- 
gation all  the  year. 

However,  his  mind  was  fully  aroused  in  it.  The  improve- 
ment of  our  Western  water-courses  was  always  an  agreeable 
subject,  and  no  man  of  his  day,  nor  since,  was  ever  more 
earnest  or  sincere  in  devotion  to  the  work  wherever  a  chan- 
nel could  be  made  or  bettered.  When  Captain  Bogue 
reached  Beardstown,  on  the  Illinois  Kiver,  he  found  Abe, 
with  two  or  three  skillful  woodsmen,  with  their  long-handled 
axes,  ready  to  pilot  him  along  and  remove  any  timber  or 
branches  in  the  way. 

In  a  few  days  the  boat  reached  a  point  on  the  river 
nearest  Springfield,  about  six  miles  distant.  A  newspaper 
said,  "The  town  went  wild  with  excitement  for  several  days." 
The  boat  discharged  its  cargo,  took  aboard  what  it  could 
for  shipment,  and  floated  away  on  the  stream,  never  to  re- 
turn. It  was  burned  at  St.  Louis  not  many  weeks  after- 
wards. Captain  Bogue  learned  what  Abe  knew  before  the 
audacious  venture  of  the  little  steamer,  that  the  Sangamon 
was  too  shallow  and  the  stream  too  uncertain  for  even  such 
a  boat  as  the  Talisman. 

Very  soon  after  Abe  "settled"  in  New  Salem  he  made 
the  acquaintance  of  Menton  Graham,  "the  schoolmaster" 
of  the  village  and  neighborhood  at  the  time.  Mr.  Graham 
must  have  been  a  diligent  student,  a  patient  teacher,  and  a 
kindly-disposed  man.  Mr.  Lincoln  always  respected  him, 
saying  of  him:  "He  had  more  information,  better  methods, 
and  knew  better  how  to  tell  what  he  knew  than  any  teacher 


THE  MEN  OF  JUS  TIME.  159 

I  had  met  or  stiulied  with  up  to  the  time.  He  taught  me 
about  all  I  had  to  begin  with  in  grammar.  He  told  me 
where  I  could  get  a  copy  of  Kirkham's  Grammar,  wliich  I 
got  very  soon  by  walking  out  into  the  country  six  miles.  I 
set  to  work  on  it,  and  with  Graham's  valuable  help  I  soon 
had  a  tolerably  fair  knowledge  of  the  subject.  I  like  the 
old  book  yet;  but  it  was  a  puzzler  at  the  start,  with  its  four, 
five,  and  six  headed  rules,  about  as  complicated  to  beginners 
as  the  Longer  Cathechism  and  the  Thirty-nine  Articles  to 
young  ministers."  It  was  his  habit  to  have  a  dictionary  al- 
ways at  hand  whenever  it  was  possible  or  convenient.  His 
mind  was  methodical  if  man's  ever  was. 

With  his  knowledge  and  study  of  grammar,  he  pored  and 
puzzled  over  it  until  Graham  told  him,  "You  know  as  much 
about  it  as  I  do."  By  careful  spelling,  added  to  his  knowl- 
edge of  grammar  and  the  analytical  and  reasoning  powers 
of  a  philosopher,  he  acquired  his  style  in  speech  and  descrip- 
tion. To  him  the  object  always  was,  first  the  truth,  in  the 
plainest,  simplest  way  he  could  tell  it ;  but  within  his  limits, 
his  force,  fervor,  pathos,  and  directness,  when  his  great 
powers  were  warmed  up  with  his  subject,  he  had  so  much  of 
the  fire  of  true  eloquence  in  his  soul  that  when  he  raised  his 
long  arm,  straightened  up  his  commanding  figure,  and  said 
in  sweet,  pleading  tones,  "No  man  shall  surpass  me  in  his 
devotion  to  the  Constituton,  the  casket  that  holds  our  liber- 
ties, nor  shall  any  man  surpass  me  in  opposing  the  admission 
of  another  foot  of  territory  or  another  State  under  it,  as 
now  interpreted,  on  which  the  withering  curse  of  human 
slavery  is,  or  has  been  planted,"  his  audience  were  not  only 
taken  "off  their  feet,  but  on  to  them."  When  aroused  before 
audience,  court,  or  jury,  no  other  man  in  our  time  could 
take  them  into  his  confidence,  and  carry  them  along  to  his 
conclusions  like  Lincoln,  whose  pleadings,  gentle  as  a  child's, 
made  men  as  brave  as  Hector. 

Before  his  enlistment  for  the  Indian  campaign  he  an- 


160  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

nounced  himself  as  a  candidate  for  the  Legislature  from 
Sangamon  County,  which  was  then  entitled  to  four  repre- 
sentatives. The  election  was  held  early  in  August.  As 
nothing  of  progress  had  been  done  before  as  stated,  he  had 
only  a  few  days  left  after  his  return  from  military  service 
in  which  to  make  his  canvass.  Although  his  service  had  been 
creditable,  and  he  returned  with  more  and  better  friends,  it 
gave  him  little  advantage,  if  any,  for  his  political  campaign. 
It  might  be  said  that  the  issues  were  made  up  and  the  suc- 
cessful candidates  selected  before  he  got  back.  He  had  no 
time,  being  a  stranger  in  every  part  of  a  large  county  except 
his  home,  to  make  the  acquaintance  needed  to  be  one  of  the 
people's  representatives.  He  made  two  or  three  addresses 
in  different  parts  of  the  county,  where  he  was  well  received, 
and  one  of  these  was  in  Springfield.  At  the  latter  he  met 
Judge  S.  T.  Logan  and  Governor  Edwards  for  the  first  time, 
and  several  acquaintances  and  friends,  who  became  his  sup- 
porters then  and  for  his  lifetime.  Major  John  T.  Stuart, 
who  was  in  service  with  him,  was  elected  to  that  Legislature, 
he  being  well  acquainted  all  over  the  county  and  the  region. 
His  military  service  was  a  benefit  to  him,  as  it  would  have 
been  to  Mr.  Lincoln  had  he  been  as  well  known,  but,  not 
being  so,  he  was  defeated. 

There  have  been  differences  as  to  what  were  Mr. 
Lincoln's  political  beliefs  in  this,  his  first  canvass.  He  re- 
marked of  it  himself,  that  political  questions  were  barely 
considered  in  it,  which  was  shown  bv  the  election  of  Stuart 
and  Cartwright,  Whig  and  Democrat  respectively,  by  about 
the  same  vote.  There  is  little  doubt,  however,  that  Lincoln, 
even  in  the  formative  period  of  his  career,  was  inclined  to 
the  Whig  party.  There  was  no  man  of  that  day  in  public 
life,  in  whom  he  believed  so  implicity,  or  followed  so  faith- 
fully, as  Henry  Clay. 

Early  in  his  Hlinois  residence  he  became  a  diligent  reader 
of  the  Louisville  Journal,  managed  by  George  D.  Prentice, 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  161 

one  of  the  most  capable,  industrious,  and  brilliant  writers 
of  the  time,  and  one  of  the  strongest  partisans  in  the  Whig 
party.  With  the  admiration  and  devotion  he  had  for  Clay  as 
a  leader,  and  his  steady  reading  of  Prentice's  wit,  argument, 
and  biting  satire,  he  drifted  into  the  beliefs  of  these  talented 
men,  when,  in  consequence,  his  inclinations  to  Whig  policies 
and  principles  grew  stronger. 

But  as  he  often  said,  he  had  high  respect  and  attach- 
ment for  Jackson,  for  his  positive,  determined  way  of  doing 
anything,  for  his  intrepid  courage,  daring  service,  and  his 
wise  management  of  public  affairs  not  strictly  partisan,  for 
his  unswerving  and  outspoken  loyalty  and  love  of  country 
throughout  his  long  struggle  with  Calhoun  and  his  hot- 
headed Carolinians,  Avho  from  1828  to  1833  nullified  the 
excise  laws  as  far  as  they  were  able,  and  until  Jackson  de- 
clared that  he  would  "enforce  the  laws  of  the  country  and 
preserve  the  Union  from  the  nullifiers  if  he  had  to  hang 
every  one  of  them,"  in  which  way  came  about  the  suppression 
of  the  first  attempt  to  establish  a  slave  Confederacy. 

There  were  several  important  considerations  which  had 
more  or  less  effect  in  influencing  an  ardent  young  man,  such 
as  he  then  was,  to  the  advocacy  of  the  doctrines  of  the 
Whigs.  In  the  wide  plains,  prairies,  swamps,  and  rivers  of 
the  great  West  there  Avas  crying  need  for  almost  unlimited 
expenditures  for  draining,  bridging,  channel  opening,  and 
deepening  of  rivers  and  harbors,  for  internal  navigation  and 
commerce,  which  took  shape  for  public  discussion  as  early  as 
Jackson's  terms,  from  1828  to  1836,  by  the  Whigs  making 
a  declaration  of  policy  in  favor  of  a  "system  of  internal  im- 
provements." 

The  Democratic  party  being  in  power  for  the  long  period 
from  1828  to  1860,  with  only  two  interregnums,  those  of 
Harrison  in  1840  and  Taylor  in  1848,  laden  with  its  cheap 
labor  heresy,  could  not  adopt  the  internal-improvement 
policy  without  carrying  it  into  operation ;  to  do  which  there 
11 


162  ABEAHAM  LINCOLN. 

were  neither  the  necessary  funds  in  ordinary,  nor  had  it  the 
courage  and  disposition  to  impose  taxes  of  any  kind  adequate 
for  the  work  required.  The  Whigs  declared  in  favor  of  the 
policy  which  had  much  to  do  in  shaping  the  political  belief 
of  thousands  of  men  all  over  the  West  during  the  periods 
of  its  rapid  and  preponderating  growth  from  1830  to  1860, 
among  whom  was  Mr.  Lincoln.  This  policy  prevailed  and 
became  popular  from  18-10  to  1860,  when  Illinois,  Missouri, 
and  some  other  Western  States,  in  lack  of  National  help, 
loaned  their  own  credit,  and  otherwise  aided  in  the  building 
of  canals,  harbors,  and  railways.  It  resulted  eventually  in 
a  land-grant  system  in  aid  of  railway  construction  and  other 
quasi-public  improvements,  first  undertaken  by  the  States, 
and  then  going  to  corporations.  It  has  always  been  a  policy 
of  very  doubtful  propriety,  but  one  so  apparently  needed 
that  it  received  the  support  of  all  parties  in  the  West  until 
the  land-grant  railroads  had  been  built. 

Since  then  the  people  have  been  seriously  pondering  and 
coming  to  a  knowledge  of  the  value  of  the  lands  and  fran- 
chises given  away,  properties  and  resoiirces  of  such  colossal 
magnitude  as  to  dwarf  in  comparison  all  there  is  of  some 
noted  Old  World  kingdoms. 

There  is  the  further  fact  that  Major  Stuart,  Judge 
Logan,  the  Speeds,  and  Herndons,  and  some  others,  good  and 
helpful  friends  of  Abe's  in  his  earliest  struggles,  were  all 
Whigs,  all  Kentuckians,  and  "followers  of  Henry  Clay,  right 
or  wrong,"  so  their  Democratic  adversaries  said.  At  least 
they  followed  him,  and  believed  he  was  right  all  the  time. 
The  political  conditions  of  that  period  are  difficult  to  un- 
derstand, if  measured  in  the  light  of  the  positive  and  dis- 
tinct division  that  followed  so  soon  afterwards,  but  which 
manner  has  always  been  too  common. 

There  was  vastly  more  of  personality  then  than  in  the 
warring  division  of  slavery  and  freedom,  and  seceding  States, 
contending  in  arms  for  and  against  a  divided  country.     To 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME  1G3 

thousands  of  the  Middle  and  Western  States,  Jefferson,  Jack- 
son, Benton,  and  the  "Little  Giant,"  Stephen  A.  Douglas, 
were  all  or  about  all  there  was  in  Democracy  for  them. 
These  were  trusted  leaders  for  two  generations  or  more,  and 
when  they  sounded  the  slogans  of  party  beliefs  they  were 
devotedly  followed,  as  when  the  opposition  did  likewise  under 
the  lead  of  the  timbrels  and  organs  and  the  party  cries  of 
Hamilton,  the  godlike  Webster,  Scott,  and  Clay. 

There  was  something  of  leader  in  Lincoln  when  a  polit- 
ical beginner;  but  the  time  was  coming,  and  not  far  distant 
in  the  thirties,  when  his  ideas  and  rugged  independence 
of  character  would  be  so  pronounced  and  so  unmistakably 
fixed  and  declared,  so  plain,  emphatic,  and  fearless,  as  to 
make  him,  among  thousands  of  able  ones,  the  leader  of 
his  age. 

Whatever  may  have  been  the  state  of  his  political  be- 
liefs, it  is  certain  that  partisan  divisions  were  held  subordi- 
nate to  personal  and  local  questions  that  year  in  Sangamon 
County,  which  was  sufficiently  shown  by  the  election  of 
Whigs  and  Democrats  on  the  same  ticket.  Mr.  Lincoln  made 
the  same  statement  about  it,  and  his  address  to  the  people 
definitely  determined  that,  "My  case  is  thrown  exclusively 
upon  the  independent  voters  of  the  county." 

He  was  for  the  first  time  a  candidate  before  the  people 
for  a  public  office,  and  the  first  of  any  kind,  except  his  selec- 
tion as  captain.  His  public  address,  like  all  his  subsequent 
ones,  was  characteristic  of  the  man,  plain,  sensible,  direct, 
and  his  subjects  were  so  clearly  stated,  even  when  briefly 
done,  as  to  leave  no  cause  for  misunderstanding  them. 

After  declaring  himself  on  some  local  affairs,  he  said: 
"Upon  the  subjects  which  I  have  treated  I  have  spoken  as 
I  thought.  I  may  be  wrong  in  regard  to  any  or  all  of  them, 
but  holding  it  a  sound  maxim  that  it  is  better  only  some- 
times to  be  right  than  at  all  times  to  be  wrong,  so  soon  as  I 
discover  my  opinions  to  be  erroneous,  I  shall  be  ready  to 


164  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

renounce  them.  Every  man  is  said  to  have  his  peculiar  am- 
bition. Whether  it  be  true  or  not,  I  can  say  for  mine,  that 
I  have  no  other  so  great  as  that  of  being  truly  esteemed 
of  my  fellow-men  by  rendering  myself  worthy  of  their 
esteem.  How  far  I  shall  succeed  in  gratifying  this  am- 
bition is  yet  to  be  developed.  I  am  young  and  unknown  to 
many  of  you.  I  was  born  and  have  ever  remained  in  the 
most  humble  walks  of  life.  I  have  no  wealthy  or  powerful 
relations  or  friends  to  recommend  me.  My  case  is  thrown 
exclusively  upon  the  independent  voters  of  the  county,  and 
if  elected  they  will  have  conferred  a  favor  upon  me,  for 
which  I  shall  be  unremitting  in  my  labors  to  compensate. 
But  if  the  good  people,  in  their  wisdom,  shall  see  fit  to  keep 
me  in  the  background,  I  have  been  too  familiar  with  disap- 
pointment to  be  very  much  chagrined." 

There  can  be  little  doubt  that  his  youth  and  want  of 
acquaintance  were  the  causes  of  his  defeat.  He  was  not 
much  known  outside  of  two  of  the  eighteen  or  twenty 
townships  of  the  county.  He  kept  well  up  with  the  poll 
in  Springfield,  and  received  almost  the  unanimous  vote  of 
his  home — New  Salem — two  hundred  and  seventy-seven  of 
its  two  hundred  and  eighty  votes. 

He  took  his  defeat  good-naturedly,  and,  as  he  had  prom- 
ised, without  regret  or  repining.  His  home  support  was 
so  strong  that  his  friends  became  more  enthusiastic  and 
more  firmly  attached  to  him.  They  felt  sure  of  his  ad- 
vancement in  public  esteem.  The  men  of  his  neighbor- 
hood, in  that  early  day,  like  the  great  body  of  the  West- 
ern people,  were  Americanized  English,  Scotch,  Irish,  and 
German  mainly,  or  their  descendants  of  the  first,  second, 
and,  sometimes,  of  the  third  generation. 

Many  of  them  were  not  as  well  lettered  as  their  fathers 
and  grandfathers,  because  of  the  lack  of  facilities  in  the 
New  World,  but  they  were  in  no  sense  an  ignorant  or  list- 
less people.     They  knew  capacity,  aptitude,  and  character 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  165 

when  they  discovered  it,  and  were  faithful,  helpful,  and 
loyal  to  the  many  bright  young  men  among  them  in  their 
aspirations  for  learning  and  knowledge.  Among  this  man- 
ner of  people  Lincoln's  friends  multiplied  as  his  acquaint- 
ance increased,  and,  as  he  seldom  lost  one,  he  was  soon 
held  in  high  favor  in  Sangamon  County. 

His  candid,  sensible  addresses  in  Springfield  were  well 
received,  and  gained  him  the  favor  and  friendship  of  a 
number  of  talented  and  influential  men,  some  of  whom 
have  been  mentioned.  From  this  time  forward  their 
friendly  advice  and  substantial  help  were  always  at  hand 
to  sustain  the  marvelous-minded  man  who  was  always  ready 
and  equipped  for  the  performance  of  any  duty  he  under- 
took. 

To  careless  people  he  was  a  mystery  from  the  begin- 
ning. He  grew  to  manhood  without  the  training,  disci- 
pline, and  methods  of  the  schools;  yet  the  best  young  man 
among  them  did  well  to  keep  pace  with,  and  not  be  distanced 
by,  this  irregular,  devouring  student  from  farms,  flatboats, 
and  the  backwoods  country.  He  appreciated  the  unanimity 
and  hearty  good  will  in  which  the  people  of  New  Salem 
Township  supported  him,  and,  without  attracting  attention 
as  a  defeated  candidate,  he  found  means  of  remembering 
and  thanking  them  for  their  cordial  support. 

After  his  return  from  his  military  service  and  his  de- 
feat for  the  Legislature,  he  passed  through  what  was  to 
him  a  very  anxious  and  doubtful  period  of  his  career.  His 
unexpected  promotion  to  a  captaincy  and  his  later  well- 
supported  distinction  cleared  the  Avay  for  him  to  seek  some 
more  remunerative  employment  than  that  of  a  farm  or  day 
laborer. 

The  navigation  of  the  Sangamon  faded  as  a  vision, 
which  was  one  of  his  sorest  disappointments;  for  he  firmly 
believed  that  he  would  have  succeeded  in  commerce  and 
navigation,  and  with  the  supporting  reasons  that  he  had 


166  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

succeeded  in  the  occupation,  and  had  good  capacity  for  it. 
It  is  probable  that  if  he  had  located  at  either  of  the  three 
thriving  towns  of  Alton,  Pekin,  or  Peoria — all  Illinois 
River  towns,  and  almost  in  his  vicinity — he  would  have  be- 
gun his  career  as  steamboatnian,  whatever  might  have  been 
the  consequences.  In  after  life  he  always  regarded  it  as 
fortunate  that  he  did  not  do  so. 

At  the  time — August,  1832 — the  Herndon  Brothers  had 
a  small  country  store  in  New  Salem.  There  was  another 
similar  establishment  there,  owned  by  one  Radford.  The 
country  stores  of  the  time  dealt  in  and  sold  everything 
needed  or  in  use  in  the  community,  from  needles,  pins,  and 
fish-hooks  up  to  sawmills  and  threshing-machines.  They 
dealt,  too,  in  the  fur  pelts  and  hides  of  animals,  bought 
and  bartered  for  the  surplus  products  which  the  farmers 
brought  to  market. 

Beardstown,  on  the  Illinois  River,  about  forty  miles  west, 
was  their  ordinary  supply  town  for  the  merchandise  re- 
ceived, and  the  shipping-point  for  the  produce,  which  they 
usually  sent  to  St.  Louis.  The  business  of  these  stores  was 
light.  The  population  was  small  and  scattered.  The  people 
kept  the  sheep,  and  raised  the  flax,  and  spun  the  wool  and 
linen,  and  did  the  weaving,  and  made  their  clothing.  They 
raised  their  own  pork,  beef,  and  mutton,  made  their  own 
sausage,  smoked  hams,  made  sauerkraut,  cured  their  bacon, 
and  cooked  their  combread,  hominy,  com  pones  or  hoecakes 
as  they  wished,  and  became  honest,  industrious,  indepen- 
dent, sometimes  a  little  contentious,  strong-minded,  strong- 
bodied,  and  supple-limbed,  and  the  best-fed  people  on  the 
earth. 

These  country  stores,  with  their  small  stocks  on  hand, 
were  bartered,  traded,  and  sold,  much  on  the  plan  and  terms 
of  crops  and  animals  grown  and  growing  for  the  market. 
There  was  very  little  money  in  circulation;  for  the  great 
masses  "moved  West"  without  much  money  or  property, 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  167 

as  we  have  seen  the  Lin  coins  did,  who  were  "average  West- 
ern movers."  As  a  result,  the  bulk  of  the  business  of  the 
country  was  done  on  long  credits,  paid  when  the  hogs, 
cattle,  corn,  pelts,  and  wool  went  to  market.  The  country 
stores  were  traded  and  trafficked  in  on  about  the  same 
conditions.  In  the  smaller  places,  their  stocks  on  hand 
seldom  ran  over  five  hundred  dollars;  hence  it  was  a  com- 
mon occurrence  for  them  to  be  sold  more  than  once  in  the 
course  of  a  year  without  any  money  payment. 

In  this  way,  the  Herndons,  not  liking  the  business,  offered 
their  store  for  sale.  An  intelligent,  decently-appearing 
young  man — Mr.  Berry — coming  West  just  then,  bought 
the  interest  of  one  of  them,  and  Mr.  Lincoln  bought  the 
interest  of  the  other  brother,  and  became  Berry's  partner. 
Eadford  sold  his  entire  store  to  one  Green,  who  had  been 
one  of  Abe's  fellow-boatmen,  Mr.  Lincoln  helped  Green 
to  make  the  invoice,  and,  believing  it  a  bargain,  he  pur- 
chased it  from  Green  for  the  firm  of  Berry  &  Lincoln  at  an 
advance  of  a  little  over  two  hundred  dollars. 

Thus  the  firm  became  the  proprietors  of  the  only  coun- 
try store  in  the  town.  In  addition,  they  branched  out 
mostly  on  hopes,  and  bought  from  Eutledge  the  only  hotel. 
All  these  transactions  were  made  and  paid  for  in  the  prom- 
issory notes  of  Berry  &  Lincoln,  which,  as  a  good  friend 
related  many  years  afterwards,  "went  into  general  circu- 
lation." 

The  ending  of  these  business  ventures  was  very  much 
like  what  happened  to  thousands  then  and  thousands  on 
thousands  since  and  now.  The  venture  was  beyond  their 
means  or  control.  They  failed  in  business.  Berry  died,  and 
Lincoln  succeeded  to  something  near  a  thousand  dollars 
indebtedness,  and,  in  time,  about  twice  that  sum  in  interest, 
which  took  him  over  fifteen  years  to  pay.  It  was  told  of 
Berry  that  he  was  dissipated  and  reckless.  Mr.  Lincoln 
said  Berry's  dissipation  was  the  result,  and  not  the  cause, 


168  ABE  AH  AM  LINCOLN. 

of  the  financial  disaster;  and  while  others  blamed  and  cen- 
sured him,  Mr.  Lincoln  never  did. 

It  was  said,  too,  that  Mr.  Lincoln  read  too  mnch,  was 
careless,  and  left  the  management  of  the  business  to  Berry, 
who  was  incompetent,  with  many  other  wise  observations, 
such  as  are  made  about  every  business  failure.  Mr.  Lin- 
coln said  of  these  stories  that,  as  there  was  not  enough 
business  to  do,  soon  after,  the  purchase  he  saw  that  failure 
was  inevitable. 

Foreseeing  this,  he  began  the  study  of  some  borrowed 
law  books,  which,  he  said,  "I  stuck  to  with  all  my  light  and 
knowledge,  knowing  very  well  that  the  more  I  knew  the 
better  I  would  be  prepared  for  some  other  business  when 
that  gave  out;  and  the  knowledge  so  gained  and  my  un- 
pleasant business  experience  were  my  entire  assets  saved 
from  the  wreck." 

From  the  time  of  this  lamentable  failure  he  continued 
to  be  under  the  thralldom  of  debts,  for  which  he  had  no 
means  of  payment.  These  debts,  however,  made  him  more 
cautious,  economical,  careful,  and  industrious,  and  stimu- 
lated him  to  renewed  energy.  After  this  there  never  was 
a  day  when  he  was  not  doing  all  in  his  power  to  pay  them. 
But  the  heavy  load  led  him  to  apply  every  dollar  on  these 
debts  which  he  could  spare,  help  his  parents  along  as  he 
could,  and  live  in  the  very  plain  and  sparing  way  that  he 
did.  One  of  the  lasting  benefits  they  imposed  on  him 
through  so  many  years  was  that  they  made  him  all  the 
more  studious,  thoughtful,  melancholic,  and  the  fast  friend 
of  men  in  trouble. 

From  the  failure,  in  the  fall  of  1832,  to  the  end  of  the 
next  winter  he  did  whatever  his  hands  found  to  do.  The 
people  in  the  village  and  neighborhood  were  all  his  friends. 
He  said  that  he  did  not  believe  there  was  one  of  them  who 
did  not  sincerely  sympathize  with  him;  but  they  were  all 
poor,  many  of  them,  in  the  cold  winter,  almost  without  fuel. 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  169 

To  all  these  he  was  a  helper  in  time  of  need.  One  of  his 
friends  said  of  it:  "There  was  many  a  widow's  and  poor 
man's  woodpile  helped  out  and  their  cabins  kept  warm 
enough  to  live  in  through  that  winter  by  Abe,  who  went  to 
the  relief  of  every  worthy  person  in  need  he  heard  of,  and, 
may  be,  to  some  who  were  not." 

He  was  alwys  able  to  work  his  way,  and  was  a  welcome 
guest  to  any  of  the  farmers  who  were  improving  their  prem- 
ises with  new  buildings,  bridges,  fences,  or  betterments  of 
any  kind.  He  helped  several  in  such  work  that  winter. 
He  found  a  few  little  jobs  of  writing,  copying,  and  squaring 
up  books  besides,  which  gave  him  the  means  of  living  until, 
as  he  said,  "I  could  do  better." 

His  comrade,  Major  Stuart,  who  was  by  that  time  a 
promising  lawyer,  and  Judge  Logan,  then  and  afterwards, 
through  a  long  useful  career,  one  of  the  strongest  men  of 
the  Springfield  bar,  both  had  seen  and  heard  and  had  been 
interested  and  captivated  by  the  "awkward  boy's  plain, 
sensible  speeches,"  and  encouraged  him.  To  these  two 
able  as  well  as  warm-hearted  men,  while  he  was  in  the  "pit 
of  despondency"  over  his  misfortunes,  he  confided  his  in- 
tention of  taking  up  the  law  during  that  winter  of  1833-33. 
In  effect  he  sought  their  advice  and  help  if  they  judged 
him  worthy.  He  surprised  them  by  what  he  knew  of  the 
statute  laws  of  Indiana  and  Illinois,  more  by  what  he  knew 
of  the  principles  and  features  of  our  Government,  as  based 
on  the  Declaration  of  Independence  and  the  Federal  Con- 
stitution. He  knew  the  codes  and  collateral  subjects  so 
well  that  he  could  give  the  substance  of  any  chapter,  and 
usually  the  section  asked  for,  from  memory,  and  much  of 
it  he  could  repeat. 

These  men  of  learning  and  high  standing  in  the  law 
were  interested  and  pleased,  not  barely  because  of  the 
accurate  knowledge  he  had  gained  under  opportunities  so 
meager,  but  that  he  had  any  knowledge  of  law,  statutes. 


170  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

codes,  or  principles  with  the  means  he  had  for  study  really 
astonished  them.  Stuart  said  of  him,  "The  wonderful  ca- 
pacities of  the  man,  and  his  exact  knowledge  of  the  stat- 
utes and  the  science  of  the  law,  as  it  is  called,  convinced 
me  that  he  must  be  a  remarakble  man,  with  great  talents, 
to  know  what  he  did  at  twenty-two  years,  when  he  first 
took  to  law-reading  in  our  office." 

In  his  interview  with  him.  Judge  Logan  said,  "How  did 
you  gain  such  knowledge  of  the  statutes  and  the  principles 
of  law  and  government?"  Lincoln  replied:  "By  the  hardest 
kind  of  study.  It  was  not  easy  for  me,  but  I  stuck  to  it, 
and  would  have  done  so  if  it  had  been  twice  as  hard.  Now 
it  comes  natural  for  me  to  study  several  hours  every  day, 
busy  or  not,  come  what  may,  and  especially  at  night,  when 
I  can  do  no  better." 

Logan  looked  the  young  man  over  carefully.  He  was 
an  educated  man,  estimated  so  in  his  day,  being  a  schooled, 
trained,  and  disciplined  lawyer,  from  the  Kentucky  bar 
and  University.  He  had  talent  and  learning  that  none 
questioned,  and  almost  everybody  liked  the  man.  Lincoln 
said  of  his  first  interview  with  him:  "We  talked  along  easily 
for  an  hour.  I  began  to  think  the  Judge  had  forgotten  the 
principal  object  of  my  visit,  or  that  I  had  not  made  it  clear 
enough,  and  would  need  to  bring  it  up  again  somehow, 
backward  as  I  felt  about  the  propriety  of  it  and  how  far  I 
ought  to  go.  He  was  held  to  be  the  ablest  man  I  had  seen. 
I  knew  more  of  the  world  than  the  country  boys  of  my  age, 
but  I  was  green  and  backward,  and  felt  a  great  deal  of  hesi- 
tation in  going  to  Judge  Logan.  But  I  had  determined  to 
get  the  best  advice  I  could.  Logan's  was  the  best  to  be 
had,  as  I  then  thought,  and  do  yet  [1854].  I  intended  to 
give  it  up  if  he  discouraged  me,  but  to  persevere,  no  mat- 
ter how  tedious  and  hard  the  work  might  prove,  or  how 
many  difficulties  came  in  the  way,  if  he  encouraged  me. 

"He  had  talked  more  about  it  than  I  expected;  but  his 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME,  171 

manner  and  quizzing  did  not  reveal  anything,  and,  as  I 
said,  I  was  about  asking  him  again  what  he  thought  of 
it,  or  putting  on  my  hat  and  leaving,  when  he  turned  to 
me,  suddenly  enough  to  startle  any  one,  and  said:  'Young 
man,  do  you  really  intend  to  read  law?  You  have  good  use 
of  language,  and  appear  to  he  thoughtful.  It  takes  a  long 
time  to  study  and  become  proficient  in  even  one  branch  of 
the  law.  It  is  a  severe  struggle,  and  a  tedious  one,  for  any 
man  to  make  himself  a  good  lawyer.  Without  means,  as 
you  appear  to  be,  it  will  be  all  the  harder.  When  you 
understand  all  this,  and  seriously  consider  the  whole  sub- 
ject, it  will  be  time  to  talk  further  about  it.' 

"I  replied  without  any  delay  or  hesitation;  for  I  was 
nerved  up  to  my  best:  'Judge,  I  don't  need  further  time 
to  consider.  My  ambition  is  to  be  a  lawyer,  and  I  will  under- 
take the  study  of  it  with  all  the  strength  of  mind  I  have, 
and  will,  with  your  and  Major  Stuart's  help,  get  right  down 
to  the  work  in  the  best  and  most  persevering  way  open  to 
me.'  Judge  Logan  looked  over  his  tableful  of  books  in  a 
pleasant  way — the  first  time  I  noticed  any  relaxation  in 
his  manner  during  the  talk — saying:  'Well,  if  you  are  in 
earnest  about  it,  throw  away  your  statutes,  or,  rather,  you 
may  lay  them  away;  but  dispossess  your  mind  of  the  idea 
that  you  know  much  about  law  because  you  have  your  head 
full  of  statutes  that  may  nearly  all  be  repealed  and  become 
obsolete  before  you  are  ten  years  older.  Law  is  a  science, 
a  system  of  wisdom  and  justice,  or  all  of  them,  founded 
on  the  immutable  principles  of  right  revealed  in  the  accumu- 
lated knowledge  of  the  wisest  men  of  all  time.  The  Bible 
is  the  greatest  law-book  in  existence.  If  you  want  to  be 
a  good  lawyer,  grounded  in  the  foundations  of  the  system, 
as  every  learned  and  experienced  man  must  be,  after  your 
Bible  take  Blackstone  for  at  least  six  months.  It  may 
take  you  more.  You  will  soon  strike  your  pace.  Then  you 
will  take  up  Coke  and  the  Institutes  of  English  law.    After 


172  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

studying  the  principles  of  right,  justice,  and  common  law, 
as  you  will  in  Blackstone,  you  will  then  he  able  to  take 
Chitty  on  "Pleadings,"  Greenleaf  on  "Evidence,"  Story 
on  "Contracts,"  and  other  standard  works  on  the  subjects 
and  particular  division  of  the  law  as  it  will  surely  come 
to  you.  Chancellor  Kent's  Commentaries,  a  new  American 
work,  will  come  in  order.  It  is  one  of  the  best,  one  that 
is  indispensable  to  American  practitioners  as  the  standard 
and  invaluable  ones  of  Judge  Story  are.  Others  will  come 
to  you  in  the  course  of  your  reading,  which  must  be,  as  you 
no  doubt  know,  studious,  persevering,  and  diligent  if  you 
are  to  succeed.  All  the  books  here  and  all  the  help  I  can 
give  you  will  be  yours.  So  it  will  be  with  Stuart  and  the 
bar,  who  will  welcome  a  man  of  your  intelligence  and  deter- 
mination. You  will  do  well  if  you  are  fit  and  qualified  for 
practice  in  three  years;  but  if  you  master  Blackstone  as  you 
have  mastered  the  statutes  of  Indiana  and  Illinois,  there  will 
be  room  for  you  in  any  court  in  the  land.' " 

This  was  the  lecture  and  initiation.  Abraham  Lincoln 
received  the  volumes  of  Blackstone  from  Judge  Logan,  took 
them  under  his  arm,  walked  home,  twenty-two  miles,  to 
New  Salem,  pondering  in  thoughtful  conclusion  that  he 
had  begun  the  study  of  the  fundamental  principles  of  law. 
It  will  do  to  say  here  that  what  he  engaged  to  do  in  his 
talk  with  Logan  he  scrupulously  fulfilled.  He  studied  his 
full  three  years,  was  the  plodding,  untiring  pupil  of  Logan 
and  Stuart,  and,  as  Logan  predicted,  became  the  favorite 
of  the  bar  at  Springfield,  and,  in  his  progress,  at  Blooming- 
ton,  Urbana,  Danville,  Clinton,  Charleston,  Paris,  Kanka- 
kee, and  Pontiac,  all  over  Central  Illinois,  and  then  at  Chi- 
cago, and  from  thence  "a  man  to  all  his  country  dear." 
That  he  became  a  wise,  learned  advocate  in  the  law  and 
statecraft  is  as  true  as  that  his  teachers  and  preceptors  had 
the  wisdom,  learning,  and  experience  to  teach  him;  for  his 
legal  preparations  for  this  work  were  completed,  very  much 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  173 

like  Graham's  course  in  grammar,  carried  to  where  Logan 
and  Stuart  said,  "You  know  as  much  about  it  as  we  do." 

This  has  been  related  carefully  because  of  the  wide- 
spread delusion  that  Lincoln  was  an  "unlearned  country 
lawj^er."  This  story  has  been  pretty  well  "stuck  to,"  and  is 
tolerated  among  some  self-supposed  learned  men,  and  even 
in  some  pretentious  histories  of  him. 

As  we  progress  and  it  becomes  apparent  that  he  must 
meet  the  best-informed,  most  learned  and  talented  men  of 
his  time  on  equal  terms  and  conditions,  or  be  utterly  un- 
spared  and  vanquished  as  a  leader,  the  fable  of  his  want  of 
learning,  elegance,  and  fitness,  as  well  as  strength  and 
knowledge,  for  his  place  will  vanish;  but  it  may  bring  up 
the  question,  "In  what  does  learning,  education,  and  pro- 
fessional knowledge  consist,  as  held  and  rated  on  this  small 
planet,  and  what  is  it  to  an  ordinary  man,  well  fitted  up 
for  his  lifework,  and  to  a  Harvard  professor?" 

The  author  was  a  boy  of  twelve  years  when  he  first 
knew  Lincoln,  and  liked  him,  as  all  the  boys  in  Springfield 
did;  for  he  took  pleasure  in  making  us  his  friends  and  in 
telling  us  delightful  little  stories  of  birds  and  trees  and  the 
woods  and  the  animals  and  the  rivers — tales  so  well  suited  to 
our  tastes  and  boyish  ways  that  we  always  wanted  to  hear  him 
tell  another  little  story. 

Later  the  author  knew  and  was  privileged  to  know  inti- 
mately and  well  the  thoughtful,  working  statesman,  as  all 
of  us  who  knew  him  best  believed  him  to  be,  and  a  man 
with  a  wonderful  store  of  knowledge.  But  it  is  told  that 
he  was  not  a  scholar,  and  that  a  dozen  or  more  of  young 
lawyers  at  Springfield,  Bloomington,  Danville,  and  every 
bar  where  he  practiced  law  and  was  leader  alongside  of 
Douglas,  were  scholars  and  learned  lawyers,  made  so  in 
regular  form  in  colleges  and  universities.  We  have  learned 
that  many  of  these,  who  were  reputed  learned  men  and 
scholars,  have  been  forgotten,  and  that  Abraham  Lincoln 


174  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

has  not  been.  When  we  learned  this  we  also  learned  that 
Pope  never  struck  any  truth  nearer  its  core  than  when  he 
said,  "A  little  learning  is  a  dangerous  thing." 

He  took  up  his  course  of  study,  taking  volume  after  vol- 
ume of  the  text-books,  as  these  able  men  directed.  At  the 
same  time  he  carried  on  his  collateral  and  general  reading 
as  industriously  as  ever.  His  capacity  for  gaining,  assort- 
ing, and  assimilating  knowledge  and  information  seemed 
equal  to  his  strength  and  endurance,  which  was  two  or  three 
times  that  of  the  men  about  him. 

Hanks,  being  asked  whether  Lincoln  was  a  scholar,  re- 
plied in  his  plain,  blunt  way  of  telling  things:  "I  don't 
know  what  a  scholar  is ;  but  Abe  could  n't  have  knowed  more 
of  what  he  read  and  studied  unless  he  could  have  lived 
without  any  sleep,  and  been  giv'n  lots  more  time;  for  he 
read  and  studied  every  minute  he  was  awake  and  could 
spare,  and  he  aljvays  read  and  figured  and  studied  until 
after  midnight  as  long  as  I  was  with  him.  As  far  as  I  know, 
he  never  met  a  man  that  knowed  more,  not  long  anyway; 
for  he  had  the  knack  of  getting  at  what  any  other  body 
knowed  very  quick;  and  in  all  the  rough-and-ready  debates 
and  arguin's  and  talks  about  improvements  and  navigatin' 
he  could  beat  any  man  in  the  whole  country  up  and  down 
the  Sangamon  Eiver." 

When  we  understand  that  he  took  up  the  rudimentary 
branches  of  an  English  education,  or  courses  of  study,  and 
mastered  them;  that  he  took  and  completed  a  regular  course 
in  law,  with  its  comprehensive  collateral  subjects  of  state- 
craft, public  policy,  commerce,  navigation,  military  affairs, 
and  the  codes  and  statutes  of  mankind  from  the  first  rec- 
ords in  history;  and  that  his  general  reading  and  informa- 
tion kept  apace  with  the  best  and  brightest  men  of  his  time, 
we  realize  that  it  is  one  of  the  follies  of  light-headed  men  to 
rate  him  as  an  ''uneducated  backwoods  country  lawyer." 

It  is  true  that  he  did  not  take  up,  in  form  or  in  his  own 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  175 

way,  the  languages,  the  classics,  or  higher  mathematics;  but 
who  that  knew  him,  or  knows  the  facts,  doubts  his  capacity 
to  have  learned  these  as  well  as  many  branches  of  human 
knowledge,  in  which  no  one  surpassed  him?  It  must  be 
remembered,  too,  that,  although  in  regular  forms  he  was 
untaught  in  language  and  derivative  forms  of  speech,  no 
one  has  surpassed  him  in  his  use  of  it  for  plain,  truthful 
expression,  pathetic  sentiment,  and  ideal  beauty,  or  in  patri- 
otic fervor  and  in  tender  sympathy. 

Moses,  Job,  Shakespeare,  Pitt,  Burke,  and  Jefferson 
left  parallels;  but  Everett,  student,  professor,  and  ideal  of 
Harvard,  essayed  to  be  remembered  at  Gettysburg.  But 
while  scholar  and  polished  forms  are  forgotten,  Lincoln's 
heroic  and  pathetic  exaltation  of  Liberty's  defenders  will 
live  with  the  defense  of  Antonio  in  the  Venetian  court. 
Lincoln,  as  the  man  of  letters,  information,  and  knowledge, 
is  not  easily  classed ;  but  not  less  so  than  Moses,  David,  and 
some  others.  But  no  well-informed  person  will  ever  know 
all  of  the  man,  and  adjudge  him  to  have  been  unlettered. 
God  gave  him  wonderful  capacities  above  all  the  men  of 
his  time.  Among  these  was  his  ready  and  rapid  aptitude  for 
acquiring  knowledge. 


CHAPTER  YIII. 

THEEE  was  a  heavy  movement  of  people  into  Central 
Illinois  and  other  Western  States  and  Territories  of 
the  period  from  1828-30,  becoming  heavier  year  after 
year,  up  to  the  war  period,  in  1860.  It  was  in  this  fertile 
basin  of  not  more  than  ten  counties — mostly  in  three  of 
them — that  Mr.  Lincoln  developed  to  manhood.  He  passed 
to  leadership  in  the  State  easily  and  without  contention, 
and  became  leader  and  chosen  ruler  of  the  Nation  as  soon 
as  the  events  and  progress  of  the  righteous  cause  required 
his  defense,  service,  and  sacrifice.  Sangamon  County  was 
the  central  one  in  his  field  of  labor.  In  the  early  '30's, 
the  period  of  which  we  are  writing,  immigrants  had  heard 
of  its  deep  alluvial  bottoms,  and  were  risking  the  ague 
and  malarial  fever  to  secure  the  golden  corn-lands,  where 
hogs  and  cattle  never  grew  better,  and  where  "hog  and 
hominy"  became  as  classic  a  diet  as  "pork  and  beans." 

They  were  locating,  marking  out,  and  improving  farms, 
and,  like  the  people  later  on,  they  were  projecting,  laying 
out,  and  building  towns  in  an  uneasy,  starting,  jerking  sort 
of  way,  much  as  men  do  now  when  occasion  and  opportunity 
are  given.  It  was  the  first  "boom"  Illinois  had,  before  Chi- 
cago was  discovered  as  an  uncalculated  enterprise  and  at- 
mospheric center.  Men  could  become  excited  in  real  estate 
then  just  as  they  can  be  now;  and  surveyors  were  in  demand. 
There  was  work  ahead,  and  a  lot  of  it,  to  survey  and  divide 
Sangamon  County's  nine  hundred  square  miles  into  fanns 
and  town  lots,  and  the  county  surveyor  needed  help. 

In  the  early  days  John  Calhoun  was  only  a  plain  county 

176 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  177 

surveyor,  before  the  fame  of  having  saved  his  county  and 
territory  to  his  party,  by  "hiding  ballots  in  candle-boxes, 
covered  up  in  a  woodpile,''  procured  for  him  the  unfriendly 
sobriquet  of  "Candle-box  Calhoun."  He  gained  this  title 
in  the  turbulent  days  of  the  Kansas  struggle,  and  held  it 
until  his  death,  perhaps  about  1857  or  1858,  away  out  on  the 
border  in  Kansas.  Calhoun  at  the  time,  in  the  spring  of 
1833,  was  looking  for  help  in  his  work,  for  there  was  more 
surveying  desired  than  he  could  attend  to  alone.  He  knew 
Abe  Lincoln;  everj^body  in  Sangamon  County  did,  after  his 
defeat  for  the  Legislature  the  year  before.  He  had  heard  of 
him  as  a  "likely  young  man,  quick  in  figures,"  and  "able 
to  get  around  out  doors  with,  or  ahead  of,  any  man  in  the 
count}'."  He  sent  for  Abe,  who  responded  at  once,  being 
advised  of  the  nature  of  the  request.  Calhoun  handed  hun 
a  manual  on  surveying,  one  of  the  standard  works  at  the 
time,  saying:  "Abe,  here  is  a  book  on  surveying.  I  have 
heard  that  you  are  an  apt  young  man,  and  when  you  study 
this  sufficiently  and  understand  the  work  well  enough  to 
carry  on  a  survey  without  help,  1  will  be  able  to  give  you 
employment." 

This  information,  and  the  agreement  for  fees  being  more 
than  twice  as  much  as  he  had  received  for  labor  or  service 
of  any  kind,  made  it  an  unusual  inducement  in  the  strained 
condition  of  his  finances.  It  would  have  been  tempting  to 
almost  any  young  man,  when  to  Lincoln  it  brought  the  firm 
resolve  to  get  the  contents  of  that  surveyor's  book  into  his 
head  in  as  few  days  or  weeks  as  the  most  determined  appli- 
cation and  the  severest  study  could  accomplish  it. 

He  hastened  home  from  Springfield  to  the  "Master," 
Graham,  who  was  his  friend  in  need,  as  he  had  been  when 
he  tackled  Kirkham's  many-ruled  Grammar.  Graham  was 
not  a  profound  scholar  in  mathematics;  he  was  better,  espe- 
cially so  in  this  emergency — a  patient,  plodding  man,  who 
if  slow  was  sure.  Lincoln  took  hold  of  the  work  with  an 
12 


178  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

earnestness  that  seemed  almost  a  passion.  Graham  was 
doing  all  for  him  that  one  man  could  do  for  another.  He 
became  uneasy  at  the  intensity  and  perseverance  of  his 
student,  who  was  studying,  diagramming,  and  practically 
measuring  land  and  calculating  distances.  He  measured  with 
a  pole  and  figured  his  work  on  a  wooden  fire-shovel,  whit- 
tling off  the  figures  when  it  was  full,  and  carrying  on  his 
work  for  about  eighteen  hours  a  day.  Graham  urged  him 
earnestly  to  be  more  moderate  and  not  overdo  himself,  lest 
he  might  injure  himself  in  a  way  that  would  last  a  life- 
time. Lincoln  assured  him  that  he  need  have  no  uneasiness 
whatever  concerning  him;  that  he  knew  the  limits  of  his 
powers,  mind  and  body;  that  they  had  never  been  over- 
reached, and  that  it  was  usual  for  him  to  work  and  study 
sixteen,  sometimes  twenty,  hours  a  day. 

It  was  in  this  way  that  he,  with  his  kind  friend's  indis- 
pensable help,  studied  out,  learned,  and  performed  many  of 
the  examples  on  measured  lands,  fitted  and  qualified  himself 
for  the  work  of  surveying,  and  reported  himself  ready  for 
work  to  surveyor  Calhoim  in  six  weeks'  time.  It  may  not 
be  surprising  to  be  able  to  study  out  the  business  and  as 
much  of  art  as  may  be  useful  in  the  work  of  surveying;  but 
it  was  unusual,  and  still  is,  for  a  man  to  take  it  up  under 
favorable  circumstances,  and  make  himself  as  capable  in  a 
year.  It  was  proof  not  only  of  talent,  but  of  the  tireless, 
persevering  spirit  of  a  young  man  who  was  sure  to  succeed 
if  he  lived. 

He  became  Calhoun's  deputy,  and  was  soon  recognized 
and  known  to  be  a  capable  and  accurate  surveyor.  It  gave 
him  ready  means  for  living  and  a  little  start  in  life,  the  first 
of  consequence  after  his  misfortune.  He  was  called  on  for 
work  in  every  part  of  Sangamon  and  in  some  adjoining  coun- 
ties, giving  entire  satisfaction  during  the  whole  of  Calhoun's 
term  of  1833-34,  and  during  part  of  that  of  his  successor, 
Neale,  whose  deputy  he  was  in  1835  and  part  of  1836.     In 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  179 

this  latter  year  he  was  examined  and  passed  as  fully  qualified 
and  wotthy,  and  took  up  the  practice  of  law. 

In  the  spring  of  1833,  about  the  time  he  qualified  himself 
a  surveyor,  he  was  appointed  postmaster  of  his  home  village 
of  New  Salem.  This  was  not  much  addition  to  his  income, 
but  the  little  helped.  There  was  no  salary  to  the  office, 
and  then  as  now  the  commissions  on  the  amount  of  business 
done  were  as  slender  as  the  most  experienced,  highest- 
salaried  official  in  the  Post-office  Department  could  figure 
them  out  or  down;  and  still  it  was  enough  above  nothing 
to  induce  some  good-natured  man  in  every  neighborhood 
to  keep  it. 

The  income  did  not  average  twenty-five  dollars  a  quarter. 
It  was  only  by  the  favor  and  help  of  some  friends  in  the 
small  village  that  he  could  keep  the  office,  for  he  was  often 
absent  in  his  work  of  surveying  as  much  as  three  to  four 
days  at  a  time.  In  this  way  the  office  was  just  so  much 
added  to  his  small  means  of  living.  He  kept  up  his  survey 
work  assiduously,  extending  it  in  every  direction  he  could 
through  laudable  methods  of  tendering  and  extending  his 
services.  He  was  a  welcome  guest  in  every  neighborhood 
where  his  work  called  him.  He  employed  help  for  the  chain 
and  stake-driving  work  in  the  locality  of  the  survey,  and 
helped  the  men  along  with  their  wage  claims  until  paid. 

In  his  careful  way  of  looking  after  everything  in  detail 
he  was  constantly  making  friends,  numbers  of  whom  volun- 
tarily assured  him  of  their  support  whenever  he  might  be 
a  candidate.  His  work  was  well  done  and  always  brought  to 
a  satisfactory  conclusion,  as  to  metes,  bounds,  and  corners, 
which  was  highly  important  to  the  settlers.  The  fees  for 
the  work  were  paid  by  the  land-owners,  except  in  the  matter 
of  locating  roads,  bridges,  and  public  work,  which  was  paid, 
after  allowance,  by  the  county. 

His  fees  for  the  work  amounted  to  about  three  dollars 
a  day.    Ten  days'  work  in  a  month  was  an  average  of  time 


180  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

employed.  This,  with  the  emoluments  of  the  little  post- 
office,  brought  in  about  forty  dollars  a  month  for  the  three 
years.  If  he  could  have  had  this  income  to  himself,  it  would 
have  been  more  than  he  would  have  used.  It  would  have 
made  many  about  him  reckless  and  extravagant.  It  was  a 
good  income  then,  when  competent  men  were  satisfied  with 
twenty-five  to  thirty  dollars  a  month,  and  day  wages  were 
from  fifty  to  seventy-five  cents.  The  income  made  him  more 
studious,  careful,  and  economical. 

It  kept  him  in  the  way  of  carrying  and  paying  his  bur- 
den of  debt  and  interest,  which  he  did  without  a  murmur 
until  it  was  all  paid  in  1849.  It  enabled  him,  also,  to  keep 
up  his  contributions  for  the  help  of  his  parents,  a  duty  that 
was  alwaj'S  a  pleasure  to  him,  and  the  means  of  his  own 
living  for  the  time.  In  these  years,  under  the  direction 
of  men  as  capable  as  university  professors,  he  studied  with 
all  the  zeal  and  inflexibility  of  determination  and  purpose 
that  characterized  him. 

He  held  the  post-office  until  1836,  when  he  removed  to 
Springfield,  and  it  became  his  permanent  home.  Some  re- 
marks were  made  at  the  time,  why  a  Whig,  one  becoming 
prominent  in  his  party,  would  hold  office  under  so  zealous 
a  Democrat  as  Jackson?  The  office  was  small,  mostly  a  con- 
venience for  the  people,  as  such  as  these  are  in  our  news- 
spreading  postal  S5'stem;  nevertheless  it  was  occasion  for 
Lincoln's  reply  that  he  admired  and  honored  General  Jack- 
son; that  he  felt  no  restraint  in  holding  the  small  office; 
that  the  hero  of  New  Orleans  filled  the  measure  of  a  true 
American  so  well,  and  his  later  work  for  the  integrity  of  the 
Union  and  the  sanctity  of  our  laws  against  the  nullifiers 
endeared  him  to  the  people  so  much,  that  "I  consider  it," 
said  he,  "an  honor  to  sustain  a  man  of  such  high  patriotic 
character,  however  I  may  differ  with  him  on  political 
questions." 

There  was  no  incident  in  his  career  up  to  the  time  that 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  181 

better  revealed  the  knowledge  he  had  of  public  affairs,  his 
keen  perceptions  and  his  broad,  liberal  Judgment  of  men 
and  the  living  issues  of  the  time.  It  was  significant  fore- 
sight in  his  early  appreciation  of  Jackson's  contest  with 
those  who  would  disobe}^  and  defy  the  laws  of  our  country, 
and  the  approaching  shadows  of  the  mighty  one  in  which 
he  was  to  be  another  Jackson. 

He  kept  the  little  office,  satisfied  the  postal  authorities, 
was  kind  and  obliging  to  the  patrons,  and  in  constant  labor 
and  industry  he  kept  it,  his  surveyor's  work,  and  his  studies, 
all  in  co-operative  support  of  his  well-settled  purpose  to  be 
a  lawyer  and  a  good  one,  as  far  as  his  powers  and  oppor- 
tunities would  qualify  him. 

It  was  said  humorously  that  "he  kept  the  office  in  his 
hat."  He  was  one  of  the  first  to  adopt  the  postal  delivery 
system,  and  as  the  exercise  was  good  for  him,  he  took  walks 
for  exercise  and  delivered  a  great  many  of  the  letters.  It 
became  a  pastime  in -the  close  seclusion  of  his  long  hours  of 
study  and  reading  all  the  newspapers  that  came  into  the 
office.  However  it  ma}'  have  been,  he  kept  the  village  post- 
office,  and  did  it  well,  until  he  removed  to  Springfield  in  the 
fall  of  1836,  when  it  was  discontinued  and  faded  from  sight, 
as  the  little  toM^n  did  when  the  settlers  learned  that  the 
great,  wide-spreading  prairies  could  be  successfuly  culti- 
vated and  towns  built  upon  them.  Some  men  said  that  "New 
Salem  was  made  for  Abe,  and  that  it  vanished  when  he  put 
his  knapsack  on  his  back  and  walked  down  to  Springfield 
to  live." 

It  was  a  saying  that  prevailed  without  dispute  those  days, 
that  Lincoln's  canvass  for  the  Legislature  in  1834  began  in 
August,  1832,  as  soon  as  it  was  known  that  he  was  defeated. 
As  mentioned,  his  work  of  surveying  took  him  to  all  parts 
of  the  county.  His  hearty  good  will,  his  helpful,  sympa- 
thetic nature  that  filled  his  heart  and  drew  men  to  him  like 
a  magnet,  made  him  hosts  of  friends  wherever  he  went  and 


182  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

became  acquainted.  He  was  never  anxious  for  public  life; 
but  after  his  defeat  he  became  more  anxious  than  he  ever 
had  been  for  the  place. 

He  had  a  way  of  knowing  things  and  telling  what  he 
knew  in  an  easy,  off-hand  manner,  that  seemed  to  come  to 
him  as  natural  and  with  as  little  trouble  as  he  walked  along 
a  country  road.  The  settlers,  the  pioneer  farmers  and  those 
we  called  the  country  people,  took  to  him  with  trust  and 
confidence  every  time,  and  no  little  of  the  familiar  "Honest 
Old  Abe"  came  from  those  who  had  fatherly  respect  and 
confidence  in  him. 

He  saw  the  drift  of  public  opinion  in  his  favor,  and  full 
of  ambition  to  be  elected  to  the  office  for  which  he  had  been 
defeated,  he  made  friends,  and  good  ones,  wherever  he  went, 
in  which  time  he  learned  something  of  his  power  to  lead 
men.  This  grew  and  strengthened  with  him  until  the  Nation 
learned  the  sort  of  man  he  was,  and  the  spirit  that  was  in 
him.  He  made  speeches  all  over  the  county,  and,  as  he  said, 
"In  that  second  canvass  I  learned  that  I  could  think,  and 
stand  on  my  legs  and  talk,  just  as  the  men  about  me  were 
doing." 

There  was  not  much  of  detail  to  the  canvass;  the  candi- 
dates were  making  it  more  on  the  ground  of  fitness  and 
personal  merit  than  their  knowledge  of  public  and  political 
questions.  Up  to  that  time  there  had  been  no  party  con- 
ventions to  nominate  or  select  candidates  in  the  West. 
Those  who  assumed  to  be  qualified  for  office  usually  con- 
sulted a  few  prominent  people  of  their  town  or  neighbor- 
hood, and  after  getting  the  approval  of  as  many  as  they 
could  and  thought  necessary,  plunged  into  the  political  race 
and  took  their  chances. 

Mr.  Lincoln  had  grown  in  strength  and  capacity  since 
his  half-made  canvass  of  1832.  He  had  reached  twenty-five 
years.  He  had  discovered  the  political  power  of  the  people, 
and  he  was  wisely  getting  acquainted  with  them.    Some  un- 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  183 

informed  writers  have  labored  in  a  very  discreditable  sort 
of  way  to  misrepresent  the  people  among  whom  Mr.  Lincoln 
grew  to  permanent  and  worthy  distinction,  writing  of  them 
as  "coarse,  ignorant  rowdies,  bullies,  and  ruffians,  not  half- 
civilized,"  and  saying  that  when  he  rose  in  life  and  was 
elected  to  the  Legislature,  "his  associations  were  with  those 
of  a  better  class,  giving  him  self-respect  from  the  improved 
relations."  These  statements  are  as  senseless  as  their  au- 
thors are  ignorant  and  unworthy  of  belief  in  their  attempts 
to  string  impudent  slanders  together  against  as  worthy, 
noble-minded,  and  intelligent  a  body  of  people  as  God  ever 
planted  and  prospered  under  the  sun.  If  this  assorted  mess 
of  conceit  and  slattern-built  stories  is  to  be  taken  for  his- 
tory, men  will  have  not  only  "wheels"  but  grindstones  in 
their  heads! 

The  men  among  whom  Lincoln  came  to  manhood  in  Cen- 
tral Illinois  were  intelligent,  hard-working,  honest,  and  hos- 
pitable. They  loved  him  for  his  great,  open  heart  and  his 
clear-headed  insight  into  the  cause  of  his  fellow-men.  God 
and  these  sturdy,  honest  people  made  him  what  he  was,  and 
"wdthout  them  there  would  have  been  no  Lincoln.  He  loved 
them  in  return  as  man  never  loved  a  people  better,  and 
there  never  was  a  time  when  they  did  not  sustain  him  in 
all  their  might  and  mind  and  strength,  and  responded  to 
his  calls  with  their  loved  ones,  and  "the  blood  of  the  first- 
born" of  almost  every  family  in  the  land. 

These  "backwoods  ignorant,  uncouth  ruffians  of  New 
Salem,"  and  their  fellow-settlers  of  the  same  kind  of  people, 
by  the  hundred  thousand,  built  schoolhouses  in  every  school 
district,  and  made  the  districts  so  small  that  the  least  of 
the  children  could  get  to  school.  These  schoolhouses,  too, 
became  at  once  the  church-houses  and  temples  of  the  living 
God,  where  every  Sunday,  day  and  night,  they  were  filled 
with  intelligent,  orderly  people  and  their  children,  many  of 
whom  had  the  burden  of  a  supposed  "education"  to  forget 


184  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

before  they  learned  how  to  get  intelligently  at  work  in  a 
new  country  and  make  a  living,  and  that  raising  calves  was 
a  better  business  on  farms  than  in  colleges. 

The  itinerants,  elders,  and  deacons  of  that  day  made 
great  sacrifices  and  endured  many  privations  to  serve  and 
worship  with  those  early  settlers  in  their  schoolhouses  and 
log-cabin  churches,  and  taught  as  pure  and  unselfish  a  gospel 
as  ever  fell  from  the  lips  of  men.  These  people  need  no 
defense.  Thousands  of  them  and  their  descendants  still  live 
in  the  limits  whereon  the  great  reformer  of  his  age  rose  up 
in  justice  and  right  to  represent  them,  and  other  thousands 
of  them  and  like-minded  men  have  pressed  forward  with 
unyielding  faith  and  heroism  in  their  work  until  our  civil- 
ization broadens  on  the  Pacific,  and  better  hope  for  human 
liberty  gladdens  the  earth.  Among  this  widespread  body 
of  free  and  sensible  people  there  are  not  many  as  destitute 
of  the  knowledge  and  the  facts  concerning  the  character  and 
habits  of  the  early  settlers  of  Central  Illinois  as  these 
writers;  they  built  up  and  developed  their  part  of  the  great 
West,  and  are  scarcely  different  from  the  greater  multitude 
of  the  strongest,  brightest,  and  equally  intelligent  Amer- 
icans, who  have  builded  up  and  civilized  the  continent.  They 
need  no  more  than  a  truthful  story  of  their  faith,  their  work, 
and  their  progress.    But  what  need,  these  histories? 

Major  Stuart  was  a  candidate  for  re-election  in  1834. 
Mr.  Lincoln  submitted  his  desires  to  him  first,  as  he  did  not 
wish  even  apparently  to  antagonize  him,  because  their  friend- 
ship was  sincere.  Stuart  not  only  approved  his  again  being  a 
candidate,  but,  with  Judge  Logan,  encouraged  him  to  make 
the  canvass,  and  to  make  it  as  earnest  and  persevering  a  one 
as  possible.  At  this  time  these  two  men  were  the  best 
informed  of  any  in  their  county  of  his  merits  and  abilities, 
and  encouraged  him  not  alone  because  of  their  friendship 
for  him,  but  in  recognizing  him  then  as  a  young  man  of 
great  promise. 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  185 

His  canvass  was  made;  he  followed  Logan's  advice,  for 
he  believed  in  him,  and  it  was  a  sober,  earnest  presentation 
of  what  he  knew  of  public  affairs.  He  was  in  every  part  of 
the  county,  and  came  to  a  knowledge  of  his  powers  and  to 
control  them  as  a  debater  and  public  speaker.  He  was 
elected.  The  poll  was:  Lincoln,  1,376;  Dawson,  1,370;  Car- 
penter, 1,170;  Stuart,  1,164,  This  was  one  of  his  well-earned 
distinctions,  and  opened  the  way  for  his  progress,  and 
marked  a  distinct  era  in  his  life. 

At  the  time  Vandalia,  a  small  town  some  sixty-five  miles 
southeast  of  Springfield,  was  the  capital  of  the  State,  and 
was  for  several  years  after  this,  being  nearer  the  center  of 
population.  In  the  Legislature  he  soon  made  himself  agree- 
able with  the  members  and  leading  men  who  habitually 
attended  the  sessions.  With  his  general  knowledge,  easy  ad- 
dress, kind  nature,  plain  running  speech,  and  memory  that 
seldom  forgot  a  face  or  a  name,  he  was  soon  a  favorite  and  as 
well  liked  as  he  had  been  by  all  in  his  home  at  New  Salem. 

He  had  little  to  do  as  a  legislator  during  his  first  term. 
He  did  well  to  make  the  favorable  acquaintance  and  the 
agreeable  impression,  that  all  who  knew  him  conceded  with- 
out question.  Leadership  came  to  him  without  caucusing 
or  any  plan  of  "fixing  up  things,"  and  so  unopposed  and 
smoothly,  that  Governor  Keynolds  said:  "As  soon  as  he  got 
his  bearings,  got  acquainted,  and  found  how  things  were 
drifting,  he  took  the  Legislature  good-naturedly  by  the 
nose,  and  led  them,  just  like  he  did  his  township  on  the 
Sangamon." 

He  supported  resolutions  requesting  Congress  to  set  aside 
all  sums  arising  from  the  sale  of  public  lands  to  be  ex- 
pended in  internal  improvements,  Illinois  was  then  a  "dyed- 
in-the-wool,"  Jackson  Democratic  State,  and  remained  one 
of  the  loyal  and  most  reliable  States  to  that  party  until  the 
disruption  following  what  were  called  the  "Compromise 
]\Ieasures  of  1850."  He  was  never  a  very  strict  partisan,  but 


186  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

always  a  liberal-minded  politician,  who  was  never  controlled 
by  narrow  or  strictly  partisan  policy.  As  a  legislator  he 
was  supported  cordially  by  men  of  all  parties,  and  as  their 
representative  his  conduct  was  entirely  satisfactory,  as  shown 
in  the  fact  that  he  had  no  opposition  and  was  returned  a 
member  as  long  as  he  could  afford  to  hold  the  place. 

He  was  as  a  representative  what  would  be  called  an  in- 
dependent now.  Later,  when  party  lines  were  strictly  drawn 
on  questions  of  conscience  and  what  he  believed  to  be  right, 
he  was  always  an  independent.  Nevertheless,  he  was  a  man 
of  positive,  well-considered,  and  strongly-held  political  be- 
liefs, or  he  would  not  have  affiliated  and  become  a  Whig 
leader  when  young  in  a  State  so  certainly  Democratic  as 
Illinois  was  and  promised  to  be. 

In  his  early  political  career,  when  his  opinions  were 
forming  and  his  purposes  strengthening,  he  was  not  much  of 
a  partisan.  His  ideal  statesman  was  Henry  Clay,  whom  he 
believed  in,  followed,  and  almost  venerated.  The  Whig 
party  was  led,  on  account  of  the  many  endearing  qualities 
of  the  man,  his  strong  personality,  his  magnanimity,  and 
undeviating  patriotism,  to  make  him  a  leader  more  than 
because  of  any  political  belief  he  held  or  advocated. 

Lincoln  was  a  believer  in  Clay  without  any  sort  of  hesi- 
tation. At  the  same  time  he  was  an  outspoken  defender 
of  Jackson,  and  admired  the  old  hero  in  many  ways  as  much 
as  any  Democrat.  He  believed  in  a  moderate  protective 
tariff,  but  studied  and  discussed  it  very  little.  He  was  not  a 
believer  in  the  old  National  Bank  plan.  He  rarely  discussed 
it,  but  was  strongly  inclined  to  the  belief  that  Jackson  did 
right  in  refusing  to  extend  its  charter.  He  was,  with  most 
of  the  Western  men  of  his  time,  an  enthusiast  on  internal 
improvements.  Clay's  cordial  support  of  all  such  measures 
made  him  the  popular  "Harry  of  the  West,"  and  gave  him 
the  strongest  hold  on  the  people  that  he  ever  attained  in  his 
long  and  useful  career. 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  187 

From  the  beginning  of  his  public  life,  Lincoln  possessed 
the  high  quality  of  independence,  of  conduct  and  character 
which  in  his  progress  became  as  necessary  as  the  full  use  of 
all  his  talents  and  strength  of  mind.  The  session  of  1834-35 
was  short,  after  which  he  returned  to  his  work  of  keeping 
the  little  post-office  and  surveying.  There  was  a  special  ses- 
sion of  the  same  Legislature  in  1835-36.  Soon  after  the 
assembling  a  L^nited  States  senator  was  chosen  to  fill  the 
vacancy  caused  by  the  death  of  E.  K.  Kane.  Semple,  regu- 
lar Democrat,  and  W.  D.  Ewing,  independent  Democrat,  were 
candidates  to  fill  the  vacancy.  Lincoln  voted  for  Ewing, 
and  he  was  elected  by  one  majority. 

One  of  the  important  measures  passed  at  this  session  was 
a  new  apportionment  of  the  State,  whereby  Sangamon 
County's  members  of  the  House  of  Eepresentatives  were  in- 
creased from  four  to  seven,  and  from  one  to  two  senators. 
Mr.  Lincoln  worked  zealously  for  this,  for  with  population 
pouring  into  the  northern  part  of  the  State,  a  relocation 
of  the  capital  became  a  strong  probability. 

Mr.  Lincoln  received  and  deserved  more  credit  for  Sanga- 
mon County's  increased  representation  in  the  Legislature 
than  any  other  person;  and  he  was  everybody's  candidate 
for  re-election,  for  the  capital  removal  had  stirred  up  Spring- 
field, and  the  young  man  with  such  captivating  and  winning 
ways,  who  was  making  friends  so  fast,  was  the  first  name  on 
every  ticket.  He  was  elected  with  that  mark  of  leadership, 
but  no  other;  for  it  was  one  of  those  remarkable  elections 
in  which  "the  offices  went  all  around."  There  were  nine 
members,  two  senators,  and  seven  representatives  to  elect. 
There  were  nine  candidates,  and  "the  big  nine,"  all  robust, 
large  men  of  six  feet  and  more  in  stature,  were  elected. 

Mr.  Lincoln  announced  himself  as  a  candidate  for  re- 
election with  more  assurance  and  independence  than  before, 
and  with  more  than  any  man  in  the  State  who  had  hopes 
or  expectation  of  election;  for  there  was  not  another  man 


188  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

known  who  would  have  declared  himself  in  favor  of  female 
suffrage  in  any  degree,  and  few,  if  any,  of  his  party  who 
were  in  favor  of  the  three  to  five  years'  period  of  natural- 
ization, which  the  Democraitc  party  was  then  supporting. 
Mr.  Lincoln's  declaration  was: 

"New  Salem,  June  13,  1836. 
"To  the  Editoi-  of  The  Journal: 

"In  your  paper  of  last  Saturday  I  see  a  communication 
over  the  signature,  'Many  Voters,'  in  which  the  candidates 
who  are  announced  in  the  Journal  are  called  upon  to  'show 
their  hands.'     Agreed;  here's  mine. 

"I  go  for  all  sharing  the  privileges  of  the  Government 
who  assist  in  bearing  its  burdens.  Consequently  I  go  for 
admitting  all  whites  to  the  right  of  suffrage  who  pay  taxes 
or  bear  arms  (by  no  means  excluding  females).  If  elected, 
I  shall  consider  the  whole  people  of  Sangamon  my  constit- 
uents, as  well  those  that  oppose  as  those  that  support  me. 
While  acting  as  their  representative  I  shall  be  governed  by 
their  will  upon  all  subjects  upon  which  I  have  the  means  of 
knowing  what  their  will  is,  and  upon  all  others  I  shall  do 
what  my  own  Judgment  teaches  me  will  best  advance  their 
interests.  Whether  elected  or  not,  I  go  for  distributing 
the  proceeds  of  the  sales  of  public  lands  to  the  several 
States,  to  enable  our  State,  in  common  with  others,  to  dig 
canals  and  construct  railroads,  without  borrowing  money  and 
paying  interest  on  it.  If  alive  on  the  first  Monday  in  No- 
vember, I  shall  vote  for  Hugh  L.  White  for  President. 
"Very  respectfully,  A.  Lincoln." 

There  was  independence  enough  in  this  to  favor  meas- 
ures advocated  by  both  political  parties,  and  much  beyond 
what  was  supported  by  either.  There  was  boldness  enough 
of  assertion  in  it  to  have  made  him  a  leader  in  either  party 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  189 

after  his  election.  He  made  no  snch  use  of  it,  and  had  no 
design  further  than  to  make  a  clear  statement  of  his  beliefs 
on  the  subjects.  No  man  ever  sought  or  contrived  less  to 
make  himself  a  leader. 

He  never  assumed  or  accepted  any  promotion,  prominent 
place,  or  leadership  until  he  knew  that  it  had  been  con- 
sidered, where  all  concerned  could  be  represented  and  he 
was  unhesitatingly  selected,  as  he  was  chosen  to  be  captain 
of  his  company.  He  had,  however,  along  with  his  clear, 
positive  endowment,  perception  and  foresight  as  great  as  any 
man.  He  could  not  help  foresee  approaching  issues  and 
events,  which  he  usually  did  before  his  opponents  or  asso- 
ciates. WTien  the  causes  were  made  up  and  the  conclusions 
were  ready  to  be  carried  out,  no  man  was  ever  more  unselfish. 

He  turned  over  leadership  and  position  to  others  when 
he  had  led  movements  to  achievement  many  times,  as  he  did 
on  a  memorable  occasion  to  Lyman  Trumbull,  who  was 
elected  United  States  senator  in  1854.  He  did  generous- 
hearted  acts  like  this  so  often  and  so  cheerfully,  that  his 
nearest  friends  came  to  believe,  and  said:  "Lincoln  will  never 
hold  any  high  office  or  position  such  as  he  is  entitled  to  by 
leadership  and  service.  Wlien  the  work  is  done,  and  some 
one  is  to  be  selected  to  hold  chief  office  or  position,  he 
yields  all  his  rights  and  gives  place  to  the  most  noisy  and 
selfish; none  others  would  force  themselves  in."  In  1840  and 
1848,  when  he  was  chief  adviser  in  our  State  during  two 
Whig  Administrations,  he  could  have  had  any  one  of  the 
positions  he  desired,  but  received  nothing,  and  helped  as 
usual  to  make  the  best  appointments  possible  and  serve 
every  every  friend  whom  he  could  to  the  full  extent  of  his 
opportunities. 

Li  this  he  builded  wiser  than  he  knew,  or  any  or  all  of 
his  friends  together  knew;  for  when  it  became  generally 
known  how  faithfully  and  zealously  he  served  so  many,  while 
struggling  along  under  debts  and  heavy  responsibilities,  it 


190  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

suddenly  enough  came  to  ns  that  he  had  made  a  thousand 
friends  for  every  opportunity  he  had  relinquished  or  given 
away.  Support  and  leadership  came  to  him  so  firmly  rooted 
in  the  affections  of  the  people  by  service  that  every  one  could 
read  and  understand  that  he  beame  a  conunoner,  a  repre- 
sentative man  of  the  people  and  undisputed  leader  in  the 
cause  that  set  millions  free  and  that  saved  the  Union. 

There  were  many  items  of  much  importance  taken  up, 
discussed,  and  some  of  them  passed  by  the  Illinois  Legis- 
lature in  1836-37.  Mr.  Lincoln  had  now  become  a  known 
political  quantity,  a  recognized  leader.  He  had  also  come 
to  a  realization  of  his  powers,  and  the  knowledge  of  how 
to  use  them  in  all  ways  which  interested  or  concerned  him. 

As  in  jSTew  York,  Pennsylvania,  Ohio,  Indiana,  Maryland, 
and  some  other  States  earlier,  the  subject  of  internal  im- 
provements engTOssed  the  minds  of  the  people  in  a  fertile 
basin  that  was  increasing  in  population  more  than  fifty 
thousand  every  year.  Many  schemes  were  planned,  pro- 
jected, and  failed.  More  of  them  that  should  have  ended 
the  same  way  were  chartered,  and  some  of  them  were  under- 
taken, in  whole  or  in  part,  by  the  State.  A  canal  from  Lake 
Michigan  to  the  head  of  navigation  on  the  Illinois  Eiver  was 
one  of  the  most  generally  approved  and  much  desired  im- 
provements. 

This  canal  enterprise,  that  the  State  half  helped,  fell  into 
the  hands  of  those  whose  chief  design  was  not  how  best 
to  make  a  very  much-needed  connecting  waterway,  but  how 
to  "make  the  biggest  pile,"  and  get  safely  away  to  some 
"financial  center,"  where  they  could  live  unmolested  on  the 
produce  of  the  State's  stolen  bonds.  Thus  the  much-needed 
canal  was  not  built,  but  the  land  was  laid  waste,  and  a  few 
financiers  were  gorged  with  the  people's  millions  for  more 
than  fifty  years.  If  it  had  been  constructed,  finished,  and  put 
in  operation,  as  well  as  the  New  York  and  Maryland  half- 
made  ditches  then  were,  it  would  have  been  an  enterprise 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  191 

worthy  the  great  and  growing  State;  but  it  halted  and 
dragged  along  some  tedious  years,  ate  "heaps  of  money,"  and 
"failed,"  as  do  many  projected  railroads  and  waterways  that 
are  liquidated  in  "taxes." 

These  were  planned  and  undertaken,  not  only  in  Illinois, 
but  all  over  the  nation,  where  what  has  been  done  without 
deliberation  or  calculation  has  loaded  us  down  with  the 
burden  of  paying  taxes  on  five  to  ten  miles  of  some  kind  of 
subsidized  transportation  route  for  every  mile  actually 
needed.  Our  Republic  has  given  away  States  in  area,  that 
would  have  made  farms  and  homes  for  twenty-five  millions 
of  contented,  self-supporting  citizens. 

With  this  recast  before  us,  it  does  not  appear  strange 
that  the  State  of  Illinois,  in  its  eagerness  for  improvements 
in  that  early  day  when  it  had  none,  gave  away  a  canal  and 
two  or  three  railroads.  The  acts  of  legislation  that  these 
men  passed,  and  that  others  have  imitated  and  followed 
since,  may  force  an  unexpected  turning  over  and  destruction 
of  values  like  plotted  secession.  The  aggressive  leaders  of 
the  slave-power  lorded  it  in  their  way,  in  the  Executive 
mansion,  in  the  halls  of  Congress,  and  in  the  chambers  of 
the  Supreme  Court.  Their  power,  they  reckoned  and  as- 
sured themselves,  was  secure  when  they  counted  their  wealth 
in  men  as  property  up  to  two  billions  of  dollars — values  so 
immense  and  dazzling  as  to  create  an  aristocracy  and  con- 
found the  plain  sort  of  people  for  awhile. 

The  war  came  and  went,  and  shattered  properties  and 
reduced  values  to  ashes,  as  bursting  bombs  tear  a  city  of 
glass  to  fragments.  It  wiped  out  of  existence  the  sin  and 
the  value  that  existed  in  human  flesh;  and  not  alone  the  two 
billions  or  more  at  which  it  was  valued,  but  over  two  billions' 
worth  of  other  property  in  the  war-blasted  South,  went  down 
in  the  common  ruin.  With  this  fiery  lesson  fresh  in  remem- 
brance, is  it  not  time  for  thoughtful  men  to  pause  and  con- 
sider whether  our  present  systems  are  not  aggregating  large 


192  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

and  sufficient  snms  of  billions  in  the  grasp  of  a  few  thou- 
sands, that  will  eventually  bring  a  greater  than  the  slave- 
holder's desolation,  as  much  so  as  the  present  surpasses  the 
values  of  1860?  When  the  subject  is  impartially  taken  up 
and  considered,  independently  of  any  personal  or  partisan 
interest,  or  the  enthusiasm  born  of  such  questions,  calmly, 
carefully,  soberly  in  the  interest  of  mankind,  in  the  spirit 
which  the  Creator  designed,  in  full  acknowledgment  of  his 
unlimited  possession  and  absolute  control  of  all  that  is  and 
exists,  is  it  not  high  time  for  the  adoption  of  a  policy  that 
will  return  these  sequestered  properties,  privileges,  and  fran- 
chises to  the  people? 

The  absorbing  topic,  the  one  taking  most  of  his  time  and 
attention,  was  Mr.  Lincoln's  special  work  for  the  session  of 
1836-37,  that  of  the  capital  removal  from  Vandalia  to 
Springfield,  He  was  named  and  selected  by  all  the  partisans 
of  his  town  as  the  leader.  He  took  up  the  work,  and  in  his 
persevering,  never-giving-up  way  of  doing  things,  made  it 
his  own  business,  forwarding  it  in  every  way  as  a  public 
measure  of  increasing  necessity.  He  wove  himself  into  the 
favor  and  good  graces  of  all  concerned,  in  such  good-natured 
way,  with  so  much  ease  and  confidence,  that  he  soon  had  his 
favorite  measure  in  a  passable  condition. 

It  was  an  unusual  rise  for  a  man  of  his  age,  then  only 
twenty-seven,  with  his  scant  experience,  to  be  so  selected 
when  the  town  had  several  able  men  of  greater  age,  training, 
and  all  the  knowledge  of  the  day  as  to  how  such  enterprises 
should  be  managed.  But  by  general  approval,  and  against 
his  desire  or  inclination,  it  came  to  him,  and  he  undertook 
the  work.  Judge  Logan,  who  was  in  every  way  qualified, 
and  who  would  have  been  one  of  the  most  capable  men  to 
manage  it  for  his  people,  said:  "Lincoln  was  at  the  head  of 
the  project  to  move  the  State  capital  to  Springfield;  it  was 
entirely  intrusted  to  him  to  manage.  The  members  were  all 
elected  on  one  ticket,  and  they  were  selected  with  a  view  to 


TEE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  193 

their  capacities  on  the  question;  but  as  soon  as  elected  they 
all  looked  to  Lincoln  to  lead." 

Many  another  burdened  legislator  has  been  tied  down 
under  the  influence  of  some  local  measure  in  our  remarkable 
country,  that  has  located  and  built  up  so  many  enterprises 
in  such  a  short  period;  but  none  were  better  if  so  well  man- 
aged. It  was  a  comparatively  easy  agreement  to  get  a  ma- 
jority to  assent  to  removal  from  Vandalia,  it  was  too  far 
south.  Herein  he  showed  his  capacity  by  getting  a  decided 
vote  in  favor  of  removal,  when  by  adroit  and  skillful  man- 
agement he  united  all  the  southern  members  on  Springfield 
to  prevent  its  being  taken  further  north  to  Bloomington  or 
Peoria. 

His  personal  influence  had  much  to  do  in  the  settle- 
ment. Some  capable  men  said  it  was  the  predominating 
force.  One  friend,  writing  of  it  several  years  afterwards, 
said:  "There  were  several  reasons  given,  but  in  reality  we 
gave  the  vote  to  Lincoln,  because  we  liked  him,  as  almost 
every  one  of  us  did,  and  we  wanted  to  oblige  him,  and  in 
this  way  recognized  his  leadership." 

Those  who  knew  his  powers  as  a  pleader  before  a  jury 
afterwards  in  any  cause  he  believed  in  and  whicji  aroused 
him,  could  easily  understand  the  correctness  of  the  above 
statement,  that  ''they  wanted  to  oblige  him."  A  member 
from  Southern  Illinois  explained  it  briefly  to  his  people, 
saying:  "Lincoln  convinced  us  that,  with  the  present  and 
prospective  growth  of  population  in  the  northern  part  of 
the  State,  we  would  do  well  to  get  the  capital  at  Springfield, 
and  not  have  it  taken  further  north,  as  it  was  sure  to  be  if 
it  was  delayed.  He  carried  it  through  the  Legislature,  when 
no  other  man  could  have  done  it." 

When  we  consider  presently  some  of  the  men  who  were 

in  and  about  that  last  Vandalia  session,  and  that  the  young 

man  of  twenty-seven  was  the  chosen  leader,  and  that  he 

successfully  carried  the  removal,  we  can  form  some  idea  of 

13 


194  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

the  strength  and  capacity  of  the  coming  leader.  There  were 
"rejoicing,  enthusiasm,  banquets,  table  oratory,  spells  of  in- 
disposition and  indigestion."  The  young  man  took  little 
interest  in  any  of  this.  He  was  in  no  way  a  beneficiary  of 
his  untiring  labor  and  success,  not  even  to  the  extent  of  a 
town  lot.  The  public  and  the  citizens  of  Springfield  re- 
ceived the  full  benefit.  The  young  man  had  won,  had  gained 
a  head  full  of  experience,  lived  in  the  capital  city,  was 
known,  and  the  people  in  the  courts  and  in  trouble  hunted 
him  up. 

In  this  period  and  the  generation  following,  this  prairie 
State  was  planning  for  its  first  canal  and  railroads  in  1835, 
and  filled  the  world  with  the  renown  and  the  well-earned 
fame  of  the  men  who  were  raising  the  young  man  from  the 
Sangamon  to  be  leader,  and  lighting  the  fire  of  the  genius 
that  was  to  be  revered  with  Washington,  the  Father  of  his 
Country.  There  were  in  and  about  that  Vandalia  session*; 
Lincoln;  Stephen  A.  Douglas,  less  only  than  Lincoln,  leader, 
statesman,  the  ablest  man  in  his  party,  and  who  remained  a 
leader  after  secession;  Hardin,  who  was  to  fall  at  Buena 
Vista;  General  Shields,  who  was  to  be  shot  through  the  lungs 
at  Cerro  Gordo,  and  live  and  be  a  United  States  senator 
in  Illinois,  Minnesota,  and  Missouri;  and  Edward  D.  Baker, 
who  was  to  command  an  Illinois  regiment  through  the  war 
with  Mexico,  that  resulted  in  the  conquest  that  was  to  make 
the  Republic  continental  in  domain,  and  plant  its  flag  and 
power  on  the  Pacific,  who  became  a  senator  from  Oregon, 
where  his  talents  and  burning  eloquence  had  much  to  do, 
along  with  the  stricken  Broderick,  in  saving  the  Pacific 
States  to  freedom,  and  a  soldier  in  the  war  for  the  Union, 
whose  blood  at  Ball's  Bluff  is  another  heritage  for  liberty 
and  Union.  There  were,  with  these,  Bissel  and  Forman,  who 
were  to  lead  brave  Illinois  regiments  in  the  Mexican  War — 
Bissel  to  become  governor  of  Illinois,  the  first  in  line  in 
1856,  a  Democrat  elected  by  a  union  of  Republican  and  Demo- 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  195 

cratic  votes  on  the  basis  of  resistance  to  the  arrogance  of 
the  slave  power.  There  were  hundreds  of  others  who  were 
to  go  with  these  colonels,  promoted  generals,  senators  and 
governors,  and  carry  our  flag  in  victory  to  the  capital  of 
Mexico,  where  they  would  win  a  peace  that  is  a  continuing 
benefit  and  bond  of  unity  for  both  nations  to  this  day. 

Of  those  who  were  to  serve  in  civil  and  military  life  with 
honor,  gallant  courage,  and  devotion  in  the  war  for  the 
Union,  there  were  a  full  thousand  in  and  about  the  session; 
for  the  capital-moving  was  an  exciting  topic  that  brought 
them  thither.  There  Fas  Yates,  a  tribune  of  the  people, 
who  was  to  become  war-governor,  following  Bissel,  with 
a  father's  feeling  and  care  for  every  soldier  mustered  in, 
the  friend,  neighbor,  and  trusted  adviser  in  every  trouble  of 
the  young  leader  who  was  to  be  President,  and  himself  in 
his  age  to  be  a  senator  from  his  State. 

There  was  Oglesby,  young,  brave,  and  daring,  who  was 
to  be  colonel,  general,  governor,  and  United  States  senator, 
one  of  the  best  and  dearest  of  all  the  friends  Lincoln  ever 
had,  who  was  to  be  wounded,  pierced  through  the  lungs,  and 
despaired  of  in  the  fiery  furnace  at  Corinth  in  1862.  He  was 
not  one  of  the  least  in  that  generation  of  worthy  heroes  who 
made  the  Republic  worth  living  for,  and  came  as  near  dying 
for  it,  as  any  wounded  sufferer  who  lived. 

Lyman  Trumbull  was  there,  a  talented,  educated  man, 
who  was  to  succeed  Shields  in  the  United  States  senate  in 
1854,  when  Lincoln's  organization  of  the  "Anti-Nebraska 
Party"  made  it  possible  to  elect  a  senator.  David  Davis,  too, 
was  there,  the  long-time  friend  and  associate,  whom  Lincoln 
promoted  from  his  district  to  the  United  States  Supreme 
Court.  There  were,  too,  0.  H.  Browning,  John  Wood, 
0.  M.  Hatch,  Jesse  Dubois,  Governor  Edwards,  Major  Stuart, 
Judge  Logan,  the  Herndon  brothers,  Joshua  Speed,  and 
Butler,  making  a  full  hundred  Old-line  Whigs,  leaders  of  the 
conservative  sort,  so  deliberate  and  so  tinctured  with  the 


196  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

slavery  miasm,  that  no  less  a  leader  could  have  taken  these 
half-slavery  believers  into  any  party  that  would  contend 
against  it. 

Wentworth,  of  Chicago,  and  Cook,  who  had  been  in  Con- 
gress with  him  for  several  terms,  were  there.  S.  W.  Moul- 
ton,  James  Gillespie,  and  a  hundred  others,  lifetime  friends, 
but  political  opponents,  were  there.  All  these  were  there; 
and  the  task  would  be  an  endless  one  to  bring  present  in 
short  review  the  brave,  bright  men,  scholars,  students,  gov- 
ernors, statesmen,  leaders,  senators,  soldiers,  and  heroes, 
who  directly  and  indirectly  afterwards,  but  all  cheerfully,  in 
their  might  and  will  put  their  shoulders  to  the  work  in  the 
proper  time  and  wa}^  that  made  Lincoln  a  leader  and  started 
him  on  the  road  to  future  achievements. 

A  ver}''  little  reflection  will  convince  us  that  there  was 
something  more  than  "an  unlearned  backwoods  lawyer" 
in  this  young  man  who  was  made  leader  and  chieftain  of 
his  own  side  to  begin,  and  of  both  sides  in  the  end,  by  com- 
mon consent,  in  a  body  and  State  full  of  as  well  learned,  in- 
formed, and  qualified  men  as  any  that  ever  planned,  coun- 
seled, and  fought  for  our  country. 

There  was  a  small,  nervous,  wiry,  slender  to  thinness, 
bright,  blue-ej^ed,  keen-featured  man  from  Bloomington, 
for  a  few  days,  at  this  Vandalia  session,  where  he  first  met 
Lincoln.  He  formed  for  him  an  attachment  such  as  he  had 
for  no  other  man.  This  continued  constant  and  faithful 
throughout  both  of  their  lives.  This  citizen  of  Blooming- 
ton  was  a  man  of  business,  who  never  became  a  public  per- 
son nor  a  politician.  He  never  sought  nor  held  office.  He 
had  been  prominent  in  N'ew  York  before  coming  west. 
Although  he  took  no  apparent  interest  in  public  affairs, 
his  insight  and  knowledge  of  the  springs,  currents,  and 
forces  that  controlled  and  directed  human  action  was  so 
acute  and  complete  that  he  was  consulted  wherever  he 
was  known.    This  small  man  that  achieved  fortune  was  one 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  197 

of  the  most  capable,  strong,  and  indispensable  of  the  home 
legion  that  eventually  won  the  Presidency  for  Mr.  Lincoln. 

This  is  the  man  who,  if  all  the  devoted,  loving  friends 
who  followed  and  sustained  the  youth  and  man  from  New 
Salem  and  Vandalia  in  1835  to  Chicago  in  1860  were  gath- 
ered and  given  appropriate  place,  would  stand  in  the  front 
ranks — Asahel  Gridley,  of  Bloomington. 

A  few  days  before  the  close  of  the  Vandalia  session, 
the  subject  of  slavery,  in  an  indirect  way,  arose,  was  dis- 
cussed, resolved  upon,  and  tenderly  laid  aside  with  a  cen- 
sure upon  "Abolitionists"  by  all  except  Lincoln  and  Dan 
Stone,  another  independent  member  from  Sangamon,  who, 
with  him,  was  not  there  to  be  influenced  or  terrified  by 
the  lash  or  threat  of  the  slave  power.  Thus,  in  the  be- 
ginning of  his  career,  at  the  threshold  of  his  leadership, 
he  was  confronted  by  the  strength  and  power  of  this  slave 
system,  the  iniquity  which  God,  in  the  majesty  of  his  deal- 
ings with  nations,  was  raising  him  to  destroy — another 
David  against  a  greater  Goliath. 

His  sincerity  was  tested.  Would  he  stand  firm  in  the 
session  where  he  was  asking  and  obtaining  favors  for  his 
town,  and  be  true  to  his  convictions  and  solemn  promises  to 
God?  Indeed  he  would,  and  did;  and  although  the  grow- 
ing State,  which  had  barely  been  rescued  from  the  blight,  was 
denouncing  Abolitionists,  he  was  there  to  do  his  duty,  and  to 
enter  his  own  and  Dan  Stone's  protest  against  the  system  so 
plainly  and  unmistakably  that  all  men  would  know  it. 

Slavery  came  to  the  Colonies,  a  heritage  of  wickedness 
that  grew  through  Britain's  world-spreading  commerce  and 
lust  of  gain.  It  was  planted  and  fastened  on  our  soil  with 
as  little  regard  for  the  laboring  men  in  the  settlements  as 
for  the  half-^vild  men  captured  and  shipped  to  our  shores 
like  beasts.  Slavery  has  been  the  same  in  all  ages — a  crime 
against  mankind,  scarcely  less  tolerable  than  murder,  which 
any  free  people  or  independent  men  would  die  resisting 


198  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

rather  than  submit  to.  It  was  a  disturbing  cause  in  the 
Colonies,  a  greater  one  in  the  formation  of  the  new  nation 
under  our  Constitution,  in  which  it  was  tolerated  and  indi- 
rectly dealt  with. 

Men  with  hare  arms,  who  live  by  their  industry,  have 
seldom  the  time,  and  never  the  means,  for  scheming  that 
those  who  live  on  the  products  of  other  men's  labor  always 
have.  So  it  was  that  this  slave  system  planned  for  and  ex- 
tended its  area,  fastening  its  clutches  deeper  in  the  vitals  of 
the  Eepublic  every  year.  It  exacted  compromises  and  agree- 
ments, one  after  another,  that  were  to  be  disregarded, 
and  compelled  the  making  of  new  ones  whenever  more  com- 
plete domination  or  more  domain  could  be  added.  Thus 
it  grew  and  strengthened  in  the  patient  fortitude  of  sin 
that  could  plan  and  wait  and  grow  for  generations.  Its 
projectors  controlled  Congress,  courts,  and  Administra- 
tions until  they  were  almost  ready  for  the  long-expected 
declaration  that  slavery  existed  by  right  of  law  in  every 
State  and  Territory  of  the  Union.  The  Supreme  Court 
did,  in  the  Dred  Scott  decision,  establish  the  power  and 
domination  of  the  slave-owner  as  far  as  its  interpretation 
of  the  Constitution  and  laws  would  allow. 

This  was  the  condition  of  the  free  Republic  from  1856 
to  1860,  when  the  slave-power  lacked  little,  if  anything, 
more  than  permanence  and  the  use  of  the  forces  they  were 
gathering  to  extinguish  free  government  and  found  their 
aristocracy.  But  God  and  his  thousands  who  had  not  bowed 
down  to  the  Moloch  that  was  binding  us  rose  up  in  their 
might  against  it. 

In  our  progress  we  must  deal  with  slavery  and  the  vault- 
ing schemes  and  ambitions  of  its  defenders,  who  thrived 
and  governed  so  many  years  in  the  peril  of  its  threatening 
and  destroying  powers.  It  was  not  only  a  vexing,  cruel 
wrong  as  a  beastly  exercise  of  strength  in  robbing  the  en- 
slaved man  of  his  God-given  rights,  but  it  carried  with  it 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  199 

other  evils,  wider  and  farther-reaoliing.  It  set  itself  up  in 
competition  against  our  millions  of  free  men,  plundering 
them  indirectly  of  sums  vast  enough  to  have  paid,  every 
year,  the  conjectured  value  of  one  and  one-half  billion  dol- 
lars held  in  slaves.  If  we  are  to  know  Mr.  Lincoln  and  the 
condition  of  the  people  at  the  time,  how  they  prospered 
or  suffered,  and  what  were  the  obstacles  in  his  and  their 
way,  we  must  reach  our  conclusions  and  make  up  our  judg- 
ment on  a  knowledge  of  the  truth  and  the  facts. 

As  we  have  related,  at  the  time  when  this  session  of  the 
Legislature  of  Illinois  was  held,  the  dominant  Democratic 
party  of  the  Nation,  under  direction  of  Jackson's  Demo- 
cratic Administration,  commanded  the  weak,  obedient 
Legislatures  of  free  as  well  as  of  slave  States  to  abridge 
free  speech  and  free  discussion  on  the  slavery  question. 
It  denounced  all  men  who  were  opposed  to  their  labor- 
crushing  system  as  "violators  of  law  and  order,  disturbers 
of  the  peace,  dangerous  people,  and  abolitionists,"  which 
meant,  in  plain  speech,  that  all  who  had  the  courage  and 
independence  to  speak  or  write  their  opinions,  and  defend 
them,  were  to  be  suppressed  in  some  effectual  way. 

Jackson  was  a  brave,  patriotic  man,  who  believed  in  the 
integrity  of  our  country.  In  the  exercise  of  these  worthy, 
statesmanlike  views  and  purposes  he  crushed  out  "nullifi- 
cation," the  most  determined  intrigue  and  encroachment  of 
the  slave  propaganda  before  that  of  1860.  He  was,  person- 
ally, a  believer  in  slavery.  Nevertheless  he  used  all  his 
power  to  suppress  its  schemes  and  prevent  disruption  of 
the  Union.  When  this  was  done,  it  gave  hope  and  encour- 
agement to  the  healthy  anti-slavery  sentiments  of  the 
people.  It  aroused  them  to  a  realization  of  their  rights 
in  all  the  free  States  and  many  districts  in  the  slave  States. 
It  brought  on  a  general,  free  discussion  of  the  system  that 
laid  bare  its  iniquities  so  clearly  and  distinctly  that,  al- 
though there  were  difficulties  and  attempted  degradation 


200  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

and  dishonor  t(3  "Abolitionists/'  men  opposed  to  slavery 
and  brave  enough  to  tell  it,  from  Boston  to  St.  Louis  and 
from  Washington  to  Milwaukee  the  voice  of  the  people 
was  never  quenched  until  the  monster  vice  went  down  in 
ruin,  with  hundreds  of  thousands  of  innocent  victims  un- 
der its  Satanic  load. 

Jackson,  seeeing  the  injury  wrought  against  "the  insti- 
tution" by  free  speech,  and  harassed  by  importunate,  short- 
sighted beneficiaries,  was  led  to  use  his  great  power  and 
influence,  and  that  of  his  party  and  Administration,  to 
suppress  free  speech.  The  crafty  plan  prevailed  in  part, 
and  the  Illinois  Legislature  passed  the  routine  sort  of  reso- 
lutions against  "Abolitionists  as  dangerous  disturbers  of 
the  peace  and  plotters  against  the  rights  and  property  of 
the  people  of  the  Southern  States,  secured  under  the  Con- 
stitution," and  calling  upon  "all  orderly,  law-abiding  people 
to  have  nothing  to  do  Avith  them." 

The  desired  effect  of  these  resolutions  was  to  ostracize 
and  gibbet  for  public  condemnation  those  men  who  be- 
lieved that  slavery  was  wrong.  Abraham  Lincoln  and  Dan 
Stone,  the  only  two  men  in  the  session  not  maimed  by  the 
blight  of  the  institution,  made  the  following  protest,  and 
had  it  read  and  entered  on  the  journal: 

"Eesolutions  having  passed  both  branches  of  the  Gen- 
eral Assembly  at  its  present  session  on  the  subject  of  do- 
mestic slavery,  the  undersigned  hereby  protest  against  the 
passage  of  the  same. 

"We  believe  that  the  institution  of  slavery  is  founded 
on  both  injustice  and  bad  policy,  but  that  the  promulgation 
of  abolition  doctrines  tends  rather  to  increase  than  abate 
its  evils. 

"We  believe  that  the  Congress  of  the  United  States  has 
no  power  under  the  Constitution  to  interfere  with  the  in- 
stitution of  slavery  in  the  different  States. 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  201 

"We  believe  that  the  Congress  of  the  United  States  has 
the  power,  under  the  Constitution,  to  abolish  slavery  in  the 
District  of  Columbia,  but  that  the  power  ought  not  to  be 
exercised,  unless  at  the  request  of  the  people  of  the  District. 
"The  difference  between  these  opinions  and  those  con- 
tained in  the  above  resolutions  is  our  reason  for  entering 
this  protest.  A.  Lincoln, 

"Dan  Stone, 
"Kepresentatives  from  the  County  of  Sangamon." 

From  this  time  forward  Lincoln  made  a  constant  con- 
test against  slavery  and  oppression.  He  was  a  leader  be- 
fore this,  made  so  on  other  issues.  This  open  defiance 
would,  it  was  truthfully  said,  have  ruined  the  political  pros- 
pects of  any  other  man ;  but  the  Master  was  caring  for  him, 
and  his  courage  and  independence  strengthened  him, 
and  more  firmly  established  him  in  his  leadership. 


CHAPTER  IX. 

THE  intention  and  desire  of  the  wise  men  who  formed 
our  Government  under  the  Constitution  was  to  adopt 
a  lenient  policy  on  the  question  of  slavery,  and,  with- 
out provoking  antagonism,  to  provide  in  every  possible  way 
by  legislation  and  example  for  its  gradual  extinction.  This 
was  the  conclusion  of  statesmen  and  soldiers  who  had 
fought  out  to  a  successful  conclusion  the  right  to  estab- 
lish a  free  and  independent  nation,  but  who,  although  rec- 
ognizing the  injustice  of  slavery,  did  not  think  it  prudent 
or  feel  able  for  the  task  of  eradicating  it  to  begin  with, 
which  would  have  been  the  best  policy. 

Washington,  Jefferson,  Madison,  Franklin,  the  Adamses, 
Hamilton,  Samuel  Eandolph,  and  a  host  of  such  men,  in 
the  free  and  slave  States  alike,  believed  in  the  wisdom  of 
that  policy,  and  set  the  good  example  of  liberating  their 
slaves  in  the  course  of  one  or  two  decades  after  the  adop- 
tion of  the  Constitution.  The  anti-slavery  sentiment  was 
so  strong,  and  the  desire  for  gradual  emancipation  was  so 
general,  that  Virginia,  in  1787,  in  its  cession  of  the  great 
Northwest  Territory  to  the  United  States,  out  of  which  have 
been  formed  and  admitted  to  the  Union  the  States  of  Ohio, 
Indiana,  Illinois,  Michigan,  and  Wisconsin,  provided  as  one 
of  the  conditions  of  this  cession  that  "neither  slavery  nor 
involuntary  servitude  shall  ever  exist  in  any  part  of  this 
Territory,  except  for  the  punishment  of  crime." 

Notwithstanding  the  lenient  policy  and  the  wisdom  and 
unselfish  patriotism  of  the  men  whose  highest  ambition  was 
to  establish  a  free  Government  for  all  men,  proving  their 

202 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  203 

sincerity  in  the  liberation  of  thousands  of  slaves,  and  dedi- 
cating all  the  territory  over  which  they  had  control  to  free- 
dom, the  succeeding  generation  of  Southern  planters  real- 
ized the  enormous  profits  which  could  be  made  out  of  the 
production  of  tobacco,  rice,  sugar,  and  cotton  with  slave 
labor.  Their  moral  convictions  were  relaxed,  the  teach- 
ings of  their  fathers  and  the  fathers  of  the  country  and 
the  judgment  of  civilized  men  were  abandoned  and  dis- 
regarded. Then,  by  a  common  understanding  among  them 
and  the  tacit  agreement  of  the  slaveholding  class,  without 
argument,  contract,  or  bond,  other  than  corresponding  prom- 
ise of  wealth,  community  of  interest  and  control,  regardless 
of  human  ideas  of  right  or  justice,  a  new  era  dawned  upon 
them.  From  the  beginning  of  the  last  century — 1801 — the 
slave  propaganda  came  into  existence — not  strong  at  first, 
but  gathering  strength  and  adherents  by  the  thousand  every 
year.  Because  of  its  immense  profits,  the  system  embraced 
and  spread  over  half  the  States  and  the  new  Territory  of 
the  Union  at  the  close  of  the  Louisiana  purchase,  in  1803. 

The  people  became  truly  alarmed  at  the  spread  and  ag- 
gregating strength  of  the  blighting,  inhuman  system,  which 
the  fathers  of  the  country  and  the  people  of  the  free 
States  believed  had  been  placed  in  a  condition  for  and  sur- 
rounded with  limitations  that  put  it  in  process  of  ultimate 
extinction.  The  liberty-believing  people  of  the  Nation  and 
their  friends  throughout  the  civilized  world  were  aroused 
from  their  mistaken  security  when,  from  the  Louisiana 
purchase  forward  to  1820,  they  learned  that  the  slave-power 
and  its  dominion  had  grown  so  great  as  to  be  almost  able 
to  take  possession  of  every  department  of  the  Federal 
Government. 

Henry  Clay,  the  great  leader  of  the  Whig  party,  came 
into  public  life  early  in  the  century,  in  1806,  and,  though 
not  elected  President  in  either  1834,  1828,  or  1844,  when 
nominated  by  his  party,  he  was  for  forty-five  years  one  of 


204  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

the  strongest  and  most  influential  men  of  his  time.  Ken- 
tucky was  loyal  to  him  throughout  his  long  career,  electing 
and  re-electing  him  to  the  United  States  Senate  and  House 
of  Eepresentatives  for  almost  the  entire  period.  On  the 
slavery  question  he  Avas  always  a  compromiser,  a  peace- 
maker, and  a  sincere  pacificator,  and  with  his  followers 
did  procrastinate  the  inevitable  conflict.  But  he,  and  thou- 
sands of  the  men  of  the  Middle,  Western,  and  Border  States, 
as  they  were  known,  were  deeply  devoted  to  and  earnest  in 
their  support  of  an  impossible  plan  for  the  settlement  of 
the  conflict  between  slavery  and  freedom.  They  lacked 
insight,  knowledge,  and  courage  to  declare  and  abide  by 
the  truth  known  of  men  for  ages,  since  Christ  declared, 
"Every  kingdom  divided  against  itself  is  brought  to  deso- 
lation, and  every  city  or  house  divided  against  itself  shall 
not  stand."     (Matt,  xii,  25.) 

A  great  many  well-intentioned  people  doubted,  shrank 
back,  and  were  much  alarmed  when  Mr.  Lincoln  announced 
the  above  underlying  truth  and  applied  it  to  the  conditions 
confronting  the  J^ation.  He  was  right,  as  the  men  who 
are  fearlessly  on  the  side  of  right  and  justice  always  are. 
Mr.  Clay  was  always  in  favor  of  a  system  of  gradual  emanci- 
pation, which  was  tolerated  by  the  slave  lords  as  a  harmless 
device,  but  was  never  more  in  reality  than  a  deceptive  dal- 
liance. Mr.  Clay,  however,  honestly  and  urgently  recom- 
mended it  to  his  State  on  its  admission  into  the  Union,  and 
on  several  occasions  afterwards,  notably  at  the  time  of  the 
adoption  of  the  Compromise  Measures  of  1850.  He  was 
then  near  the  close  of  his  distinguished  career,  when  his 
ambitious  desires  had  all  given  way  to  impartial  and  un- 
clouded judgment,  but  when,  even  under  this  strong  de- 
sire and  pleading  of  their  wisest  statesmen,  they  had  never 
considered  his  plan  more  than  a  deception.  His  life  was 
a  singular  and  eventful  one,  full  in  the  surging  tide  of  ex- 
cited factions  threatening  and  preparing  for  war,  while  he 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  205 

remained  the  calming  element  against  advancing  anti-slav- 
ery sentiment  and  the  bulwark  against  which  the  hot-headed 
slave-leaders  lashed  in  anger  for  almost  fifty  years.  He 
was  a  man  of  commanding  presence  and  ability,  magnetic 
to  the  degree  that  he  won  respect  from  all  parties — a  man 
who,  in  his  full  sway,  "had  to  be  fought  or  followed,  or 
fought  and  hated,"  as  the  passioned,  nervous,  little  John 
Eandolph  often  said,  and  as  General  Jackson,  no  doubt, 
long  wished  for  an  opportunity  to  do. 

Mr.  Clay  held  slaves,  and  was  a  moderate  believer  in 
the  system  of  slavery.  He  was  sustained  in  high  office  for 
his  lifetime  by  his  slave  State.  He  was  never  trusted  or 
counseled  by  the  slave-extenders  or  the  slave  propaganda,  as 
it  came  to  be  called  when  better  known  and  understood.  He 
was  never  called  to  advise  or  participate  in  its  plans,  pur- 
poses, or  management;  but  he  and  all  the  compromisers  of  the 
time — among  whom,  with  Clay  far  in  the  lead,  were  Benton, 
Crittenden,  Van  Buren,  General  Scott,  Douglas,  and,  in 
the  end,  Webster — these  were  partially  trusted  and  expected 
to  make  piecemeal,  slavery-encroaching  compromises  with 
all  parties,  to  restrain  and  suppress  as  far  as  possible  the 
freedom-believing  people,  while  the  slave-system  was  mak- 
ing such  anstonishing  progress  that  they  obtained  national 
supremacy  from  the  adoption  of  the  miserable  compromise 
concessions  to  slavery  in  1850  until  the  free  men  of  the 
land  rose  in  mighty  strength  and  swept  the  peace-at-any- 
price  statesmen,  time-servers,  doubters,  pigmies  in  courts, 
imbeciles,  hypocrites,  and  traitors  from  administration  and 
power,  and  restored  the  Republic  to  God  and  the  rights 
of  man. 

The  Clay  compromise  of  1820  admitted  Missouri,  a  slave 
State,  one  of  the  largest  in  area  to  that  time,  with  its  north 
line  of  boundary  at  40  degrees  and  30  minutes,  a  line  north 
of  Springfield,  111.,  Indianapolis,  Ind.,  and  Columbus,  Ohio. 
The  encroachment  thus  made  extended  slavery  hundreds 


206  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

of  miles  north  of  the  old  "Mason  and  Dixon's  line,"  the 
north  line  of  Maryland  and  the  Ohio  Eiver  west,  north  of 
which,  it  had  been  long  and  generally  agreed  to  from  the 
adoption  of  the  Constitution,  that  it  should  never  be  ex- 
tended. 

This  raised  objections,  earnest  opposition,  and  resist- 
ance that  came  very  near  an  open  conflict.  Seeing  it  so  im- 
minent. Clay,  in  his  masterly,  persuasive  way,  calmed  the 
agitation,  and  finally  effected  the  celebrated  compromise, 
by  which  Missouri  was  admitted  without  restriction  against 
slavery,  with  another  solemn  engagement  on  the  part  of 
the  slave  power  that  slavery  should  never  be  extended  or 
introduced  into  any  territory  of  the  United  States  north 
of  36  degrees,  30  minutes,  corresponding  with  the  south  line 
of  Missouri. 

Hence,  in  the  first  generation  following  the  establish- 
ment of  the  Government,  slavery  not  only  did  not  enter 
into  a  process  of  "gradual  extinction,"  which  it  was  ex- 
pected to  do,  but  was  far  ahead  in  all  newly-acquired  terri- 
tory, gaining  strength  and  headway  under  a  determined 
policy  of  rapid  expansion. 

This  compromise,  so  solemnly  declared,  over  which  so 
much  earnest  discussion  was  had  for  two  years,  and  in 
which  passion  so  nearly  provoked  the  impending  conflict, 
settled  nothing  so  far  as  the  future  was  concerned.  Mis- 
souri, another  slave  State,  was  admitted  with  its  political 
power;  and  the  gateway  for  the  extension  of  slavery  was 
opened  into  the  great  Northwest.  It  is  true  that,  to  get 
Missouri  admitted,  the  slave-owners  agreed  that  their  sys- 
tem should  not  be  extended  north  of  36  degrees,  30  minutes ; 
but,  to  get  the  new  State  in,  they  violated  another  as  well- 
understood  and  inviolable  agreement  not  to  extend  it  north 
of  the  already  fixed  northern  slave  boundary.  It  is  per- 
plexing now  to  believe  that  anti-slavery  people  were  so 
often  deceived  by  the  conditions  about  them  and  the  oft- 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  207 

broken  promises  of  the  slave-extensionists  to  restrict  their 
system.  They  were  not  deceived,  but  were  peacefully-dis- 
posed men,  who  truly  dreaded  the  responsibility  and  re- 
sults of  war,  and  suffered  the  wrongs  and  indio;nities  of 
the  slave-propagandists  for  two  generations  rather  than  see 
the  land  plunged  into  the  horrors  and  direful  calamities  of 
civil  war.  They  were  not  deceived  by  the  promises  or  the 
''sacred"  engagements  of  leaders  debased  by  such  a  system, 
nor  should  people  ever  be  by  men  or  monarchs  who  live  and 
thrive  on  the  products  of  other  men's  unrewarded  toil.  To 
such  persons  a  compromise  or  forced  agreement  mostly 
gives  opportunity  to  take  all  they  can  get,  regardless  of 
promises,  agreements,  or  bonds  for  the  future,  as  the  slavery 
leaders  did.  They  invariably  took  all  they  could  squeeze 
out  of  every  "final  settlement"  of  the  slavery  question;  at 
the  same  time  they  strengthened  the  turbid  system  by  brow- 
beating barbarism,  broken  and  violated  treaties  and  con- 
ventions, crafty  seizures,  and  war.  All  the  while  plausible 
pleaders  like  Calhoun,  Clay,  and  poor,  broken-down  Webster, 
were  harranging  courts  and  senates  "for  the  slaveholders' 
rights  under  the  Constitution."  It  was,  when  constructed 
in  the  light  of  its  framers,  a  triily  sacred  foundation  law 
of  government,  made  by  men  who  would  not  pollute  its 
fair  escutcheon  with  the  name  of  slave.  Disregarding  all 
that  had  been  done  to  rid  the  Nation  of  the  world-recog- 
nized curse,  the  slave  power  forced  all  compromisers  to  plead 
for  its  "rights,"  as  if  rights  could  arise  out  of  the  act  of 
a  despot,  who  stole  a  man,  and  sequestered  him  and  his 
earnings  and  that  of  his  descendants  ever  afterwards. 

Men  and  women  were  sold  and  bartered,  husbands  and 
wives  separated,  little  children  taken  from  their  mothers' 
breasts,  when  it  was  convenient  or  profitable  to  the  owner. 
They  were  brutes  and  chattels  under  the  law  and  in  the 
market,  and  much  worse  in  the  dreaded  slave-pens.  This 
horrid  system,  originating  in  despotic  right,  perpetuated  in 


208  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

nothing  better,  was  borne  and  suffered  until  patriotic  Chris- 
tian men  tore  off  its  hellish  fetters,  and  released  all,  even 
the  slaveholders,  from  their  sin  that  was  eating  out  the 
heart  of  a  free  people  and  leading  us  to  inexcusable  desertion 
of  human  rights. 

It  was  beginning  in  us  the  work  of  decay,  that  has 
extinguished  more  than  a  hundred  nations  that  have  for- 
gotten God  and  the  rights  of  his  people.  Slavery  not  only 
took  the  unrewarded  toil  of  the  black  man  under  the  lash, 
but,  like  all  brutal  and  unjust  systems,  which  can  only  exist 
in  the  exercise  of  some  wrongfully-used  force,  this  cruel 
system  of  brutal  injustice  came  to  be  sustained,  protected, 
and  defended  by  every  Government  in  the  land — ^municipal, 
State,  or  National.  All  had  to  be  brought  under  the  con- 
trol of  the  slave  regime,  defended,  not  only  in  protection  of 
the  polluted  ownership  of  men,  but  in  the  suppression  of  all 
speech  or  writing  against  it.  It  usurped  and  perverted 
authority,  used  slander,  innuendo,  or  ridicule,  arrested  and 
imprisoned  many  for  "made-up"  offenses,  and,  with  the 
help  of  coarse,  brutal  men,  broke  up  public  meetings  held 
to  consider  and  discuss  the  system  as  it  affected  them  under 
our  reputed  free  Government.  To  do  this  it  employed  those 
who  were  as  vile  in  ruffianism  as  slavery  was  old  and  steeped 
in  vice.  They  had  hirelings  to  lead  riots,  as  in  Boston, 
against  Phillips  and  Garrison;  and,  worse,  to  murder  heroes, 
as  it  did  Elijah  P.  Lovejoy  at  Alton,  Illinois,  in  1837.  It 
would  be  a  strange  and  almost  unbelievable  story  to  recount 
the  persecutions,  wrongs,  and  outrages  inflicted  on  disbeliev- 
ers, abolitionists,  and  all  men  brave  enough  to  contend 
against  slavery  in  the  free  States. 

There  was  no  kind  of  business,  industry,  or  profession 
that  the  obnoxious  interference  or  persecuting  venom  of 
slave-owners  did  not  reach.  The  public  press  could  only 
print  or  publish  what  they  approved.  Newspaper  presses 
were  silenced,  burned,  or  thrown  in  the  river,  quietly,  as 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  209 

Lovejoy's  was.  Wherever  possible,  college  teachers,  instruc- 
tors of  all  kinds,  and  ministers  of  Christ's  gospel,  were  com- 
pelled to  affirm  and  teach  "the  Divine  right  of  slavery," 
and  authenticate  the  "Scriptural  authority"  for  its  existence 
and  continuation. 

John  C.  Calhoun  entered  Congress  from  South  Carolina 
shortly  after  Henry  Clay  did  from  Kentucky,  about  1811. 
He  gathered  and  united  under  his  leadership  the  promi- 
nent men  in  the  slave  States,  and,  with  his  high  capacity, 
organized  the  slave  propagandists  as  a  body  politic,  a  self- 
contained  power,  purposely  independent  of  and  unconnected 
with  any  political  party  from  the  beginning.  It  was  a  body 
in  existence  without  records,  forms,  or  codes  to  interfere 
with  or  trammel  it  in  work  or  action,  consolidating  and  using 
the  whole  political  strength  of  the  entire  slave  section.  It 
existed  on  the  authority  of  a  ruling  class,  a  high  aristocracy. 
Its  aggregated  power  was  the  sum  of  all  the  powers  of  all 
the  slave  States  in  unity,  without  a  break  in  the  line.  Its 
control  was  supreme,  acting  finally  under  the  determined 
will  of  the  one  trusted  leader,  who,  for  the  time,  exercised 
the  prerogatives  of  a  despot.  Its  policy  was  comprehensive, 
positive,  and  severe.  Wliere  complete  control  prevailed, 
its  punishments  were  merciless,  and  States,  cities,  and 
people  were  as  thoroughly  Russianized  as  Warsaw. 

In  its  forty-five  years,  from  1830  to  1865,  it  had  two 
chief  leaders  only — Calhoun,  who  organized  it,  and  Jeffer- 
son Davis,  under  whom  it  perished.  During  its  time  it 
was  served  by  many  men  of  high  personal  integrity  and 
honor  in  their  dealings  with  each  other  and  the  few  whom 
they  held  to  be  equals.  Thousands  of  them  were  men  of 
courage,  intelligence,  and  distinguished  ability  as  citizens, 
soldiers,  and  statesmen.  But  the  cursed  system,  which 
held  them  all  as  servitors  whenever  and  wherever  required, 
made  them  play  the  dissimulation  of  free  representative 
Government;  while  industry,  in  competition  with  unpaid 
14 


210  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

labor,  was  perishing,  and  ignorance  was  spreading,  and  men 
were  retrograding  under  its  relentless,  despotic  rule. 

The  Democratic  party  claimed  its  origin  in  Jefferson's 
declarations,  that  "all  just  Governments  derive  their  powers 
from  the  consent  of  the  governed."  That  all  Governments 
should  be  founded  on  this  basis,  and  that  the  people  are, 
and  should  be,  the  custodians  of  all  power,  and  that  in  every 
way  it  was  the  party  of  the  people  as  against  aggrandized 
wealth,  power,  or  prerogative,  were  all  empty  forms  to  the 
slave-leaders,  with  their  "domestic  system"  to  protect. 
Their  paramount  object  in  law  and  politics  was  to  keep 
their  millions  in  secure  bondage.  With  full  knowledge  of 
the  strength  of  the  Democratic  organization,  they  took  ab- 
solute control  of  it  in  every  slave  State  soon  after  President 
Jackson's  last  term,  in  1837. 

Illinois  was  admitted  as  a  free  State  in  1818.  The  senti- 
ment among  its  early  settlers  was  strong  against  slavery. 
Many  of  these  people,  however,  although  they  had  been 
virtually  driven  from  the  slave  States  by  the  ruinous  com- 
petition of  slave  labor,  when  they  became  prosperous  in 
the  rich  lands  of  the  new  State,  became  advocates  of  the 
slave-system.  A  number  of  others  listened  to  the  se- 
ductive arguments  of  these  pro-slavery  advocates.  Some 
local  leaders  from  Kentucky  and  Tennessee  came  over 
to  their  relatives  and  friends  to  help  and  to  lead  them 
in  the  effort  to  make  it  a  slave  State.  They  had 
been  strengthened  and  stimulated  by  the  admission  of 
Missouri  as  a  slave  State  in  1880,  so  much  so  that  the  local 
slave-leaders  made  a  two  years'  effort,  using  every  argument, 
persuasion,  and  influence  in  their  power  to  make  Illinois 
a  slave  State,  notwithstanding  the  prohibitory  clause  of 
the  cession  of  the  Northwest  Territory  by  Virginia  and  its 
acceptance  by  all  parties  concerned. 

The  influences  this  created  were  so  strong  that  several 
slaveholders  came  to  the  State  with  their  slaves.     It  was 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  211 

estimated  at  the  time,  and  for  several  years  afterwards, 
until  in  the  '30's,  that  as  many  as  two  hundred  slaves  were 
held  in  various  parts  of  the  State,  The  local  influence  in 
the  neighborhoods  was  so  strong  against  agitators  and 
Abolitionists  that  many  of  these  black  people  were  held  as 
slaves,  some  as  late  as  1840.  The  design  to  make  it  a  slave 
State,  regardless  of  every  interest,  promise,  or  engagement, 
had  such  strength  that  a  resolution  providing  for  a  vote  for 
and  against  a  Constitutional  Convention  passed  the  Legis- 
lature in  1823. 

The  pro-slavery  people  supported  the  call  for  a  Conven- 
tion. The  anti-slavery  people  took  up  the  contest  with  such 
vigor  and  energy  that  the  Conventionists  were  confounded. 
It  became  a  campaign  of  argument,  determination,  and  edu- 
cation. The  schoolteachers,  almost  in  a  body,  rose  up 
against  the  cursed  evil.  Men  gave  their  time  and  money; 
and  in  many  towns  and  townships  these  anti-slavery  meet- 
ings were  addressed  by  ministers,  teachers,  public  men,  and 
farmers. 

The  anti-slavery  people  made  an  earnest  campaign 
against  the  scheme,  and  determined  to  defeat  it.  They  dis- 
tributed literature  in  large  quantities,  and  had  it  printed 
and  circulated  in  every  voting  district  in  the  State.  Gov- 
ernor Edward  Coles,  late  from  Virginia,  went  into  the  work 
with  all  his  energy  against  it,  contributing  his  time  and 
two  years'  salary.  The  contest  was  a  vigorous  one,  carried 
on  by  both  parties  with  all  the  energy  and  resources  at  their 
command. 

The  anti-slavery  people  prevailed,  to  the  great  good 
and  lasting  honor  of  the  State.  The  proposed  Convention 
was  decisively  beaten  by  a  majority  of  eighteen  hundred  in 
a  vote  of  something  less  than  twelve  thousand.  Thus  the 
State  was  saved,  and  probably  the  Nation,  from  a  blight 
that  would  have  destroyed  both. 

These  incidents,  following  in  succession,  made  at  every 


212  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

opportunity  for  the  strengthening  or  spread  of  their  insti- 
tution, show  the  dogged  perseverance  and  pertinacity  of 
the  slave  propaganda,  which  hesitated  at  no  obstacle,  either 
law,  territorial  right,  or  even  life,  when  success  appeared 
attainable.  The  people  of  Illinois,  although  full  of  the 
spirit,  energy,  and  daring  of  pioneers,  were  withal  a  law- 
abiding  and  conservative  community.  Their  toleration  of 
slavery  had  origin  in  the  protection  given  it  in  the  States 
which  so  many  of  them  emigrated  from.  The  pro-slavery 
leaders  took  advantage  of  this  to  arouse  their  indignation 
against  every  one  speaking  or  writing  against  slavery  as  a 
"disturber  of  the  peace  and  agitator,"  and  the  crowning 
condemnation  of  stigmatizing  them  as  "Abolitionists." 

These  slow-going  people  in  all  changes  of  law  or  custom, 
although  anti-slavery  in  belief,  would  have  remained  neu- 
tral. They  believed  in  letting  slavery  alone  in  the  States 
where  it  existed.  To  them  it  had  the  strength  and  sup- 
port of  the  law  with  which  the  people  of  the  slave  States 
were  content  to  abide.  They  believed  it  to  be  a  question  of 
right  for  those  States  to  sanction  and  sustain  slavery  under 
authority  of  what  they  understood  as  control  over  domestic 
institutions  and  to  regulate  them,  and  that  the  States  held 
such  power  under  the  Constitution.  Hence  to  these  con- 
servative, war-dreading  people  "Abolitionism"  or  interfer- 
ence with  slavery  in  a  slave  State  was  an  offense  against 
law  and  order,  deserving  the  severe  punishment  of  the  law 
as  much  as  other  violations  and  disobedience  of  it.  With 
the  gTeat  body  of  the  people,  respecting  slavery  because  it  ex- 
isted under  form  of  law  in  the  slave  States,  and  over  one- 
third  of  them  positively  in  favor  of  slavery  in  their  State, 
as  shown  by  the  vote  of  1823,  we  can  get  at  the  bottom  of 
the  feeling  against  agitators  and  Abolitionists,"  under  which 
anti-slavery  people  were  condemned. 

This  was  the  condition  of  affairs  when  the  great  slavery 
leader,  Calhoun,  with  aides  and  helpers,  were  organizing 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  213 

and  strengthening  the  slave  power  under  one  management. 
It  was  a  time  when  prudent,  conservative  men,  as  they  were 
called  in  those  days — such  as  Stuart  and  Logan,  of  Spring- 
field, with  whom  Mr.  Lincoln  studied  law;  Judge  David  Da- 
vis, of  Bloomington;  0.  H.  Browning,  of  Quincy;  Col.  Har- 
din, of  Jacksonville,  and  others,  all  Old-line  Whigs;  and 
Judge  Douglas,  Richardson,  of  Quincy;  Wentworth,  of  Chi- 
cago; General  James  Shields,  Lyman  Trumbull,  Judge 
Breese,  and  others.  Democrats,  and  thousands  of  the  most 
prominent  and  respected  in  both  parties — ^believed  that  agi- 
tation of  the  slavery  question,  especially  as  it  existed  in  the 
States,  was  a  great  wrong,  and  that  persons  engaged  in  it 
were  dangerous  disturbers  of  the  peace — men  who  were  en- 
titled to  no  legal  protection. 

With  public  opinion  resting  upon  such  a  basis,  it  can  be 
better  understood  why  a  man  like  Lovejoy  was  mobbed,  and 
two  printing  presses  belonging  to  him  were  destroyed,  and 
he  was  deliberately  murdered  on  his  own  premises,  while 
no  one  of  the  murderers  was  ever  arrested  or  tried  for  the 
offense.  It  appears  plain,  also,  why  none  but  Lincoln  and 
Stone  of  the  entire  Illinois  Legislature  of  1834-35  had  the 
courage  to  resist  or  oppose  the  fulmination  of  Jackson's 
pro-slavery  Administration,  discharged  against  disbelievers 
in  the  slave  system. 

It  was  not  long  after  Calhoun's  disruption  ^vith  Jackson  in 
1831-32,  and  his  rapid  recovery  from  it,  that  he  pushed  for- 
ward with  more  energy  than  ever  every  measure  that  would 
enlarge  or  strengthen  the  dominion  and  extent  of  the  domain 
of  slavery.  The  invasion  of  the  Territory  of  Texas  was 
begun  as  early  as  this  period  of  1831-33.  It  was  taken  and 
held,  finally,  as  far  west  as  the  line  of  the  Eio  Grande,  a 
territory  equal  to  five  large  States  in  area,  when  the  pre- 
dominating purpose  of  every  Democratic  Administration, 
from  Jackson  in  1834  to  Polk  in  1845,  was  to  acquire 
it  as  a  balancing-power  against  the  admission  of  free  States. 


214  ABBAHAM  LINCOLN. 

It  seemed  National  destiny  and  wise  policy  eventually  that 
brought  Texas  into  the  Union;  but  it  was  a  plain  example 
of  bringing  good  out  of  evil,  as  God  often  does  in  controlling, 
guiding,  and  circumventing  the  best-laid  schemes  of  men. 
Texas,  as  slave  territory,  was  not  needed,  except  to  count 
and  balance  against  freedom.  Without  slavery,  under  wise 
management  and  free  institutions,  it  has  resources  to  be- 
come the  equal  of  any  area  or  nation,  ^vith  five  or  more  mil- 
lions of  independent,  prosperous  people. 

Under  Calhoun's  management,  the  Democratic  party, 
which,  in  every  part  of  the  Nation,  had  been  organized, 
builded  up,  and  was  the  party  of  the  people,  as  against  all 
encroachments  of  wealth  and  power,  gained  complete  as- 
cendency in  the  slave  States.  Hence  it  became  their  instru- 
ment in  all  their  schemes  for  projecting,  advancing,  holding, 
and  protecting  their  power.  In  doing  this  it  reached  and 
enforced  supremacy,  defeating  and  politically  destroying 
every  man  who  would  not  yield  fealty  to  it  and  become  a 
menial  in  its  dastard  work.  In  its  power  it  compassed  and 
achieved  the  downfall,  defeat,  and  humiliation  of  the  best 
and  brightest  of  its  own  party  for  more  than  a  generation, 
and,  with  them,  all  those  in  the  "Whig  party  who  pandered 
or  trafficked  with  it,  or  who  ever  expected  more  than  a 
diet  of  husks  from  it.  In  its  cruel  reign,  it  not  only  emascu- 
lated, dissevered,  and  left  languishing  and  dying  the  great 
party  of  the  people,  with  its  high  hopes,  noble  ambition, 
and  the  most  perfect  discipline  of  any  body  that  ever 
served  and  struggled  for  mankind,  but  it  took  down,  in  its 
remorseless  tyranny  and  unpitying  malice,  the  best  men 
of  the  Nation.  It  stranded  and  wrecked  statesmen  like 
Benton,  Cass,  Silas  Wright,  Marcy,  Preston,  Blair,  Doug- 
las, Winfield  Scott,  Webster,  and  Clay.  It  also  toyed,  daw- 
dled with,  and  led  whithersoever  it  would  its  Pierces, 
Brights,  Touceys,  Buchanans,  and  the  inventoried  dwarfs 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  215 

and  tailored  ornaments  of  Cabinets  and  rostered  lists  of  the 
pay-rolls,  as  Franklin  did  with  his  kites. 

When  Lincoln  returned  to  New  Salem  from  his  term  of 
service  in  the  Legislature  he  had  become  a  celebrity.  The 
little  village  was  fading  as  its  chief  citizen  was  rising;  but 
there  were  many  good  people  in  it  and  its  little  neighbor- 
hood who  were  faithful,  as  they  had  always  been,  to  Abe, 
the  youth  who  rose  to  lasting  fame  and  deserved  leadership 
with  their  unanimous  wish  and  every  help  they  could  give 
him.  To-day,  no  doubt,  if  there  is  one  of  them  alive,  the 
memories  of  the  past,  fathers,  mothers,  or  descendants, 
they  keep  their  traditions,  and  treasure  in  their  hearts  the 
almost  sacred  remembrances  of  the  time  and  the  unselfish 
patriotism  that  made  them  all  as  one  man  in  "starting  Abe 
Lincoln"  on  his  forward  road,  from  the  little  village  of  New 
Salem  to  the  mountain-tops  of  eternal  light. 

About  the  time  of  his  removal  to  Springfield  in  1836, 
there  was  a  gathering  of  the  neighborhood  and  village  where 
they  were  building  a  new  bridge.  When  the  hard  work 
was  over,  there  was  something  of  a  feast,  merry-makings, 
trials  of  strength,  and  other  sports,  and  then,  as  now,  too 
much  drinking — too  much  then,  surely;  for  their  raw  whisky 
was  only  ten  to  fifteen  cents  a  gallon,  and,  as  usual  then  on 
such  occasions,  they  had  a  barrel  of  it.  Among  those  pres- 
ent was  a  man  of  powerful  build  and  strength,  as  he  must 
have  been  to  be  a  champion  among  a  hundred,  nearly  all 
six  feet  in  stature,  and  well  proportioned.  This  later 
Achilles  was  over  six  feet  in  height,  strong,  and  weighed 
two  hundred  pounds.  Heavy  green  logs  were  sawed  in  two- 
foot  lengths,  corded  and  boxed  at  the  ends,  and  supplied 
with  rope  handles.  The  load  was  piled  up  to  one  thousand 
pounds  dead  weight,  with  a  strong  platform  above  it,  on 
which  the  lifter  stood.  "Sam,"  the  champion,  mounted 
the  pedestal  where  all  could  see,  slightly  bent  forward,  with 


216  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

every  muscle  forced  and  straining,  and  every  nerve  sustain- 
ing and  holding  him  together,  and  lifted  the  monster  load 
six  inches  from  the  ground. 

There  was  applause  and  a  feeling  of  relief;  for  the  man 
was  overstrained.  He  had  done  this  with  little  preparation 
and  no  unusual  training;  for  athletics  was  not  a  system 
there.  Mr.  Lincoln  warmly  congratulated,  him  on  his  suc- 
cess, and  was  about  leaving,  when  his  towering  form  by  the 
side  of  the  man  called  attention  to  his  own  lifting  and  ex- 
ercise of  strength  in  saving  the  flatboat  and  its  cargo  a  very 
few  years  before,  very  near  the  bridge  they  were  building. 
No  excuse  would  satisfy  them.  "You  must  show  us  what 
you  can  do."  Although,  as  one  of  them  related,  "He  was 
always  shifty  and  could  get  out  of  any  tight  place,  and  told 
us  he  was  out  of  practice,  and  had  been  shut  up  and  housed 
all  winter,  nothing  would  do,  and  I  believe,  just  to  keep  us 
all  in  good  humor,  he  stepped  onto  that  platform,  and  lifted 
the  load  a  clear  foot  from  the  ground  without  a  grunt  and 
without  any  straining."  Some  of  the  champion's  friends 
halloed  out:  "Do  it  again!  We  didn't  see  it  good."  Mr. 
Lincoln,  to  satisfy  these,  stepped  on  the  platform  again  in 
a  few  minutes,  saying,  as  he  did  so,  "Sam,  sit  down  on  top 
of  the  pile,"  which  he  did.  Then  Abe  raised  the  big  load, 
with  Sam  on  it,  almost  as  easy  as  he  did  the  first  time. 

The  bung  was  knocked  out  of  the  barrel  of  whisky.  Be- 
ing challenged  again,  he  took  hold  of  it  by  the  chines  over 
the  end,  raised  it  at  arm's-length,  took  a  mouthful  of  liquor 
from  the  open  bunghole,  turned  his  head  to  the  right,  and 
spit  it  out  on  the  ground  over  his  shoulder.  On  laying  the 
barrel  on  the  ground,  he  said  in  substance,  as  he  related  it 
years  afterwards,  when  invited  to  drink,  as  he  often  was, 
"That  reminds  me  of  the  first  temperance  lecture  I  ever 
made,"  and  then,  after  relating  the  above  incident,  he  con- 
tinued: "My  friends,  you  will  do  well  and  the  best  you 
can  with  it  to  empty  this  barrel  of  liquor  on  the  ground  as 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  217 

I  threw  the  little  part  of  it  out  of  my  mouth.  It  is  not  on 
moral  grounds  alone  that  I  am  giving  you  this  advice:  but 
you  are  strong,  healthy,  and  rugged  people.  It  is  as  true  as 
that  you  are  so  now  that  you  can  not  remain  so  if  you  indulge 
your  appetite  in  alcoholic  drinks.  You  can  not  retain  your 
health  and  strength  if  you  continue  the  habit,  and  when  you 
lose  them,  neither  you  nor  your  children  are  likely  to  regain 
them.  As  a  good  friend,  without  counting  the  distress  and 
wreckage  of  mind,  let  me  advise,  that  if  you  wish  to  remain 
healthy  and  strong,  turn  it  away  from  your  lips." 

It  will  appear,  as  we  progress,  that  Lincoln  was  formed 
and  grew  to  mighty  strength  and  power  and  control  in  a 
mold  that  shaped  and  fashioned  him,  and  grew  the  bones 
and  flesh  of  a  man  to  the  power  of  a  giant,  making  the 
groundwork  on  a  perfectly-developed  human  frame  the  best 
that  could  be  in  length,  form,  weight,  and  facilities  for  mo- 
tion, in  attachments  and  smoothly-working  limbs  and  Joints, 
in  tendons,  sinews,  and  muscles,  all  ready  in  all  their  grasp- 
ing and  retaining  strength,  and  all  at  the  service  and  com- 
mand of  his  will. 

Lincoln  was  almost  a  perfect  man  in  build  and  mold, 
one  that  was  truly  majestic;  and  in  this  strong-bodied,  great- 
souled  man  there  was  proof  that  God  made  him  in  his  own 
image,  and  that  all  his  strength,  endurance,  and  the  full 
powers  of  his  mind  were  necessary  for  the  great  work  before 
him.  He  was  given  an  endowment  of  wisdom  and  physical 
greatness  equal  to  the  difficulties  and  trials  he  was  to  meet, 
contend  with,  and  overpower,  avouching  the  truth  that  when 
our  race  gets  ready  for  a  forward  movement  in  the  cause 
of  right  and  justice,  the  man  to  lead  will  appear. 


CHAPTER  X. 

IT  was  at  the  sessions  of  the  Illinois  Legislature  at  Van- 
dalia,  in  1836-37,  that  Mr.  Lincoln  and  Stephen  A. 
Douglas  met  and  became  well  acquainted.  These  men, 
growing  up  to  manhood,  leadership,  and  merited  distinction 
together,  were  soon  to  be  the  contending  leaders  of  the 
great  parties  of  the  time.  These  two  men  of  marvelous 
powers  with  the  people  of  their  State,  struggling  along 
together  and  against  each  other  to  be  more  distinguished 
in  the  ISTation  and  in  their  State,  have  never  had  the  course 
of  their  lives  and  leadership  and  their  relations  to  each 
other  properly  and  temperately  laid  before  the  people  of  our 
day  for  calm,  impartial,  and  deliberate  consideration.  It 
has  obtained  too  much  that  they  were  antagonists  and  no 
more;  therefore  enemies,  as  similarly  situated  men,  North 
and  South,  frequently  became  in  the  progress  of  discussion 
and  disputes  that  ripened  into  war. 

There  was  contention  between  these  master  leaders.  It 
was  all  that  these  two  able  men  could  make  it,  in  strength, 
fervor,  and  determination,  to  sustain  the  legality,  fairness, 
and  justice  of  the  cause,  and  retain  the  leadership  of  the 
pretty  evenly-divided  bodies  of  Americans,  the  parties  that 
followed  them.  In  vindication  of  truth  and  the  memories 
of  two  such  noble-minded  men,  it  must  be  said  that  no 
matter  how  exciting  the  discussion  became,  nor  how  warmly 
and  earnestly  they  contended,  their  discussions  were  never 
unpatriotic,  nor  cause  for  a  single  break  in  the  true  friend- 
ship that  existed  between  them  from  their  first  well-made 
acquaintance  at  Vandalia. 

218 


I'  (  '  ' 

ii"ii/h III  I'll, 


\,\ 


I i/iii , 

I'l  || 

liHlirlllili  |i  I 


STEPHEN  A.  DOUGLAS. 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  219 

Their  lives  were  so  closely  interwoven  in  the  consider- 
ation, treatment,  and  results  of  the  momentous  events  and 
issues  of  the  time,  that  the  facts  concerning  their  lives, 
their  discussions,  contentions,  agreements,  and  final  unity 
of  purpose  and  action,  must  all  be  told  if  we  are  rightly  to 
understand  them  and  gain  a  truthful  knowledge  of  the 
period  and  its  exciting  history,  so  full  of  interest  to  every 
American  citizen  of  our  native  land,  whose  rights  and  privi- 
leges have  grown  so  priceless  under  the  lead  of  the  giant- 
minded  Douglas  and  the  greater  Lincoln. 

Douglas  was  a  man  of  broad  capacities,  having  a  well- 
trained  mind,  with  energy  and  determination  or  will  that 
would  have  succeeded  with  half  his  mental  equipment.  He 
was  short  of  limb  and  stature,  still  strong  and  resolute  in 
look  and  build,  with  a  large  body  and  overgrown  head  that 
left  no  doubt  of  his  masterful  capacities,  perseverance,  and 
resources.  He  came  of  a  long  ancestr}'-,  rightly  distinguished 
for  courageous  service  in  the  cause  that  preserved  Scotland's 
liberty  and  carried  the  united  standard  of  the  Lion  and 
Unicorn  over  the  seas  and  continents  of  all  the  earth,  and 
service  to  mankind  in  every  other  field  of  human  knowledge 
or  endeavor.  He  was  descendant  of  one  of  the  great  families, 
whose  clans  filled  the  mountains  with  men  who  fought  and 
won  and  fell  on  every  field  that  saved  and  held  their  coun- 
try's liberty,  ''The  land  that  loved  the  heart  of  Bruce." 

His  father  was  a  scholarly  man,  a  physician,  a  student  de- 
voted to  his  humane  and  unselfish  work.  The  family  lived 
at  Brandon,  Vermont,  April  23,  1813,  when  Stephen  was 
born.  Brandon  had  aspirations:  it  had  an  academy,  where 
young  people  could  gain  knowledge  and  information,  where 
the  elder  ones  had,  along  with  these,  some  very  stubborn 
"Yankee  notions,"  one  of  which  was,  "that  slavery  is  wrong 
and  unjust."  The  young  Stephen  grew  and  went  to  the 
district  school  and  the  academy  as  faithfully  as  his  mother 
could  keep  him  going.     He  attended  the  latter,  in  all,  as 


220  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

much  as  one  year,  but  with  little  thought  or  realization  on 
the  part  of  mother,  teachers,  or  himself  what  a  wonderful 
career  he  was  entering  and  preparing  for  in  Brandon's  un- 
pretentious academy.  There  was  little  thought,  then,  that 
he  would  sit  eighteen  years  in  the  jSTation's  Congress,  as  a 
great  leader  at  his  forty-eighth  year,  nor  that  he  would  sit 
in  three  terms  in  his  country's  highest  deliberative  council, 
the  Senate,  and  be  a  well-respected  leader  in  those  bodies, 
with  Calhoun,  Crawford,  Clay,  Benton,  Davis,  and  Critten- 
den, of  the  slave  States,  and  Cass,  Webster,  Ewing,  Seward, 
Sumner,  and  Chase  of  the  free  States. 

His  father  died  when  he  was  a  child  only  two  months  old. 
His  mother  removed  to  a  small  farm  in  the  vicinity,  where 
he  grew  to  be  fifteen  years  old  in  the  New  England  farmer's 
way  of  living,  working,  going  to  school,  and  persevering, 
which  amounted  to  close  application,  moral  straightness, 
hard  work,  the  economy  that  forced  the  use  of  every  arable 
inch  of  soil  in  a  range  of  marble  and  granite,  which  was  then 
waiting  the  development  of  the  tombstone  and  summer 
vacation  business  and  industries. 

Im.pressed  with  the  maxim  that  ''industry  is  the  surest 
foundation  of  success,"  Stephen,  at  fifteen  years  of  age, 
went  to  a  neighboring  cabinet-maker  to  learn  the  trade; 
but  finding  on  a  short  trial  that  his  health  and  strength 
were  giving  way,  and  that  he  was  not  able  for  the  labor,  he 
made  the  best  of  his  time,  and  completed  as  well  as  he  could 
his  schooling  in  the  academy. 

About  1828,  his  mother  married  Mr.  Granger,  of  Canan- 
daigua.  New  York,  to  which  town  the  family  removed.  Mr. 
Granger  was  kind  to  and  much  interested  in  the  big-headed 
boy,  who  was  never  without  a  book.  By  his  advice  and  help, 
Stephen  entered  the  academy  at  that  place,  where  he  also 
found  opportunity  for  the  use  of  a  law  library  in  the  town. 
He  made  use  of  all  these  facilities,  and  in  the  five  years  of  his 
residence  there,  besides  the  work  of  helping  his  kind  step- 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  221 

father,  he  figured,  studied,  and  read  himself  into  student, 
scholar,  teacher,  and  lawyer. 

His  mind  and  strength  held  him  equal  to  all  the  appli- 
cation and  study  that  his  unequally-developed  system  of  too 
much  head  would  bear,  which  was  true  also  of  the  brilliant 
forty-eight  years  of  living,  in  which  it  was  true  that  his 
dauntless  and  indefatigable  spirit  and  intellect  wore  out 
and  consumed  his  overchested,  overbrained  anatomy,  cutting 
off  fifteen  to  twenty  years  of  the  average  life  of  such  men. 
However,  he  became  a  power  in  the  land,  when  in  the  fast- 
flying  years  he  achieved  the  work  of  a  lifetime,  and  left 
a  record  of  stubborn  patriotism  that  has  never  become 
dimmed. 

At  Canandaigua  he  studied,  worked,  and  wrote  sixteen 
to  eighteen  hours  a  day,  with  all  the  books  he  wished  for 
at  his  command,  resembling  Lincoln's  steady  work  and  study 
at  New  Salem,  but  with  the  wider  opportunities  of  a  library. 
There  is  no  exaggeration  in  acknowledging  him  a  giant, 
which  he  really  was  in  intellect,  when  it  is  remembered  that 
in  his  meteoric  career  from  his  start  with  thirty-seven  cents 
in  his  pocket  at  Jacksonville  in  1833  to  Chicago  in  1861, 
in  twenty-eight  years  he  had  filled  the  measure  of  any  Amer- 
ican's ambition,  except  being  President,  for  which  he  was 
barely  defeated,  by  the  greatest  leader  and  prophet  of  his 
time. 

In  the  early  spring  of  1833  he  arrived  in  Jacksonville, 
Illinois,  tired  and  wornout  with  travel,  having  walked 
twenty-five  miles  from  Beardstown,  on  the  Illinois  River, 
with  "three  bits"  in  his  pocket,  as  he  related,  but  paying 
small  attention  to  that,  for  the  trip  west  had  strengthened 
and  invigorated  him,  and  his  capital  was  in  his  head.  He 
was  twenty  years  of  age,  and  as  well  fixed  for  work  of  his 
capacity  and  liking  as  any  young  man  he  met,  and  with 
determination  to  succeed. 

Jacksonville  is  the  county  town  of  the  rich  county  of 


222  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

Morgan,  about  the  equal  in  resources  of  Sangamon,  the 
adjoining  county,  where  Abe  Lincoln  was  struggling  along 
under  equallj^  disadvantageous  surroundings  at  New  Salem. 
Jacksonville  had  perhaps  a  thousand  people,  Springfield 
twice  as  many.  Douglas  felt  himself  equal  to  any  require- 
ment, and  was  well  fixed  in  his  town.  Lincoln,  four  years 
older,  was  still  preparing  for  his  advance  to  Springfield. 

Douglas  hunted  up  an  auctioneer,  worked  for  him  two  or 
three  days;  for  he  could  write  and  cast  up  accounts,  and  his 
employer  could  not.  He  received  six  dollars,  a  respectable 
sum  for  those  days,  on  which  he  could  live  for  three  weeks. 
He  soon  heard  of  an  opening  to  teach  "a  subscription  school" 
at  Winchester,  sixteen  miles  southwest,  the  county  town  of 
Scott  County,  a  smaller  town  than  Jacksonville.  He  suc- 
ceeded in  getting  a  school  of  forty  pupils,  which  he  taught 
through  a  term  of  three  months  with  entire  satisfaction  and 
rising  popularity  in  both  towns. 

He  kept  hard  at  work  with  his  law  studies  through  the 
school  term,  and  was  readily  admitted  to  the  Jacksonville 
bar  at  its  close.  With  his  small  savings  he  opened  a  law 
office  in  Jacksonville  in  the  fall  of  1833,  from  which  time 
forward  he  had  no  lack  of  clients  or  business.  He  soon 
rose  to  distinction  as  one  of  the  clearest-headed,  closest 
reasoners  at  the  bar.  His  memory  seemed  equal  to  the  other 
qualities  of  his  richly-stored  mind,  where  all  his  laborious 
readings  were  ready  at  his  service.  His  learning  and  widely- 
gathered  information,  his  high  capacity  in  drawing  conclu- 
sions and  reaching  judgment,  and  his  sagacity  as  a  debater, 
made  him  a  leader  at  the  Jacksonville  and  Springfield  bars 
when  only  twenty-one  years  of  age. 

In  the  spring  of  1835,  at  twenty-two  years  of  age,  he 
was  elected  to  the  Illinois  Legislature  to  fill  a  vacancy,  where 
he  took  a  seat  the  youngest  member  of  the  body.  He  was  a 
member  of  the  Vandalia  session  of  which  we  have  written, 
in  which  Mr.  Lincoln  won  his  first  distinction  and  leadership 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  223 

in  the  capital  removal.  Douglas  gave  this  measure  his  un- 
qualified support,  which  was  reasonable  enough,  for  his 
adjoining  county  of  Morgan,  next  to  Sangamon,  would  be  as 
much  benefited  as  any  by  the  removal.  Thus  at  -the 
threshold  of  his  truly  great  career,  as  in  the  time  of  party 
sunderings  at  its  close,  he  stood  in  line  on  the  same  side  with 
Lincoln. 

It  seems  appropriate  to  the  purposes  and  design  of  the 
writer  to  make  this  a  truthful  record  of  the  facts  in  the  life 
of  Mr.  Lincoln,  and  of  the  men  working  and  contending  with 
him,  and  the  momentous  issues  of  his  time,  to  explain  the 
personal  relations,  by  which  much  of  the  information  here 
recorded  came  to  his  knowledge. 

The  father  of  the  writer,  Nimmo  Browne,  was  a  Scotch- 
man, born  in  1804,  with  training  and  ancestry  back  for  cen- 
turies in  some  of  the  oldest  families  of  Carrickshire  in  the 
heart  of  the  Lowlands.  The  families  had  military  name  and 
record  of  service.  As  many  as  five  of  them  served  with 
Wellington  in  his  French  and  Spanish  campaigns,  and  three 
of  them  fell  at  Waterloo,  Nimmo  was  born  and  educated 
at  Glasgow,  where  he  passed  his  course  of  study,  taking  after- 
wards special  courses  in  engineering  and  art  at  the  Univer- 
sity of  Edinburgh.  He  was  a  young  man  in  1828  of  learning 
and  promise,  and  would  have  taken  up  the  work  of  his  pro- 
fession, civil  engineering,  in  his  rapidly-growing  home, 
Glasgow,  but  for  the  unrighteous  tradition,  a  burden  and 
requirement  resting  on  the  families,  that  at  least  one  eligible 
son  of  each  one  of  them  must,  as  proof  of  loyalty,  enter  the 
military  or  naval  service  of  the  crown. 

That  he  might  be  free  from  restraint,  he  did  what  thou- 
sands of  Scotchmen  have  done — he  emigrated.  He  sailed 
from  Glasgow,  and  after  a  tempestuous  voyage  of  six  weeks 
by  the  way  of  Hatteras  and  other  stormy  southern  capes,  he 
arrived  in  ^ew  York  City  about  December,  1829,  where  he 
found  occupation.    He  had  pursued  his  work  diligently,  had 


224  ABB  AH  AM  LINCOLN. 

earned  success  that  satisfied  him,  and  was  doing  well  when 
"the  bankers'  money  panic  of  1837''  disrupted  the  business, 
and  bankrupted  over  ninety  per  cent  of  the  men  in  trade 
and  commerce  of  the  city,  and  eventually  about  as  many 
more  all  over  the  new  Nation.  He  weathered  that  wreckage 
two  3^ears,  and  supposed  he  had  survived  the  destroying, 
frenzied  storm  with  nothing  worse  than  shrinkages,  when,  in 
1839,  one  of  the  trustedj  most  relied-on  banks  went  down 
with  most  of  his  savings.  Wlien  it  could  carry  its  worthless, 
defaulted  securities  no  longer,  it  was  discovered  to  have  been 
in  a  state  of  failure  from  1837. 

In  this  situation,  with  an  acceptable  offer  of  engineering 
work  to  a  young  though  inexperienced  man,  he  turned  his 
course  westward  with  his  family  of  wife  and  two  children, 
the  Avriter  then  being  a  bo}^  of  five,  crossed  Pennsylvania 
and  the  Alleghany  range  by  stage  and  railroad  to  Pittsburg 
in  about  a  week,  thence  down  the  Ohio  and  up  the  Mississippi 
Elvers,  in  two  weeks  more  to  St.  Louis,  Mo.,  where  the 
family  arrived  in  1840.  He  soon  found  active  employment 
in  the  public  buildings  then  in  progress  in  the  growing 
western  city,  where,  although  the  work  of  that  time  was 
plain,  it  was  substantial;  and  his  work  on  the  old  United 
States  court-house,  the  post-office,  and  custom-house  build- 
ings remains  as  firm  and  solid  as  when  it  was  done  more  than 
half  a  century  since. 

In  1841  he  received  a  request  to  go  to  Springfield,  Illi- 
nois, where  the  old  capitol  building  was  being  finished, 
partly  redesigned,  and  its  top  work  and  facades  were  in 
course  of  construction.  The  planning,  hoisting,  and  derrick 
work,  which  was  hazardous,  required  experience  and  knowl- 
edge like  his,  where  there  were  not  many  who  had  it  in  the 
West  of  that  day.  This,  which  he  carried  on  with  his  St. 
Louis  work,  took  our  family  to  Springfield  to  live  as  much 
as  half  the  time  in  the  years  from  1842  to  1845-46.  He  was 
there  part  of  the  time  of  1841,  before  the  family,  alone. 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  225 

Mr.  Douglas  was  Secretary  of  State  for  the  State  of 
Illinois  when  we  arrived  in  St.  Louis;  when  by  fortune,  or 
favor  of  some  kind,  through  the  mutual  acquaintance  of 
some  Scotch  people  who  were  instrumental  in  bringing  us 
west,  the  family  were  kindly  introduced  to  Mr.  Douglas. 
He  was  then,  like  all  the  Illinois  State  officers,  quite  anxious 
for  the  completion  of  the  capitol  building.  He  was  fre- 
quently in  St.  Louis,  where  in  1841  he  first  met  Nimmo 
Browne.  They  affiliated  at  once,  and  became  friends  and 
"cronies."  It  was  through  his  attention  and  desire  that  my 
father  undertook  the  work  on  the  building,  and  our  family 
went  to  Springfield  to  live  during  the  work. 

Mr.  Douglas  was  a  man  of  affairs  in  every  way,  kind, 
obliging,  capable,  and,  as  it  happened  through  his  manage- 
ment that  we  were  for  a  period  citizens  of  Springfield  with 
him,  he  seemed  to  be  always  doing  something  for  our  com- 
fort and  contentment.  He  was  anxious  that  we  should  like 
Illinois,  Springfield  if  we  would,  and  so  sincere  in  his  service 
to  us  that  he  blended  the  conduct  of  a  gentleman  with  the 
zeal  of  a  friend. 

Nimmo  Browne  was  without  doubt  an  acquisition  to  a 
capable,  rising  man  like  Douglas.  The  latter  was  of  Scotch 
ancestry,  of  a  clan  as  old  and  honored  as  it  was  brave  and 
true.  Browne  was  late  from  Paisley,  Mid  Lothian,  Glasgow, 
and  Edinburgh  and  their  universities,  and  the  busiest  hive 
of  their  busiest  industries,  his  home,  the  renowned  manu- 
facturing, ship-building  city  of  Glasgow,  on  "the  dear  old 
Clyde."  He  was  an  active,  energetic  man  of  business,  trained 
and  experienced  in  the  school  of  "the  great  American  panic." 
He  was  a  man  of  skill,  an  engineer,  and  an  artist  of  no  mean 
pretension,  for  he  had  sculptured  "Judas,"  that  darkly-lined 
the  Glasgow  chapel.  He  was  an  educated  man  and  scholar, 
if  Glasgow  and  Edinburgh  could  make  one. 

He  became  not  only  a  builder  of  cupolas,  columns,  and 
fagades,  but  a  valuable  friend  and  helper  to  the  untiring 
15 


226  ABBAHAM  LINCOLN. 

student  that  earned  the  name  of  "giant"  in  a  field  of 
statesmen. 

This  personal  statement,  besides  being  a  willing  tribute 
to  a  worthy  father,  is  to  light  up  the  way  to  how  and  what 
we  know  of  Douglas,  and  through  him  at  first  how  we  came 
to  know  Abraham  Lincoln.  Further,  for  the  reason  that 
so  much  has  been  said  of  the  schooling  and  learning,  or  the 
lack  of  it,  of  these  compatriot  leaders,  an  accredited  man 
of  learning,  the  near  friend  of  one  of  them  and  the  respected 
acquaintance  of  the  other,  has  been  introduced.  There  is 
no  intention  to  use  or  distort  the  intimate  knowledge 
gained  of  these  men  to  the  support  or  introduction  of  pre- 
conceived opinions  or  beliefs  concerning  them;  but  with 
knowledge  derived  from  themselves  and  from  concurrent 
events,  we  shall  proceed  on  our  way  with  lighted  torch, 
gathering  facts  and  telling  the  story  of  these  two  great 
Americans,  who  were  not  altogether  another  Jonathan  and 
David,  but  very  much  more  so  than  most  men  of  this  day 
believe. 

Browne  was  nothing  of  a  partisan,  and  too  much  ab- 
sorbed in  his  work  to  take  any  active  part  in  public  affairs. 
However,  he  had  been  a  close  student  of  political  economy 
and  statecraft.  He  was  a  Democrat,  not  because  Jackson 
was,  but,  although  from  an  old  house  of  generations  back, 
because  his  comparatively  free  Scotland,  its  institutions  and 
his  learning,  had  made  him  one.  He  had  grown  up  under 
his  training  a  believer  in  Christ's  precept,  "Therefore  all 
things  Avhatsoever  ye  would  that  men  should  do  unto  yon, 
do  you  even  so  to  them ;  for  this  is  the  law  and  the  prophets" 
(Matthew  vii,  12) ;  than  which  the  rights  of  man  can  have  no 
better  foundation.  No  small  part  of  the  consideration  that 
brought  him  to  this  country  was  the  freedom  of  opinion  and 
equal  rights  guaranteed  under  our  system.  He  had  lived  in 
'New  York  full  ten  years,  where,  whatever  might  be  said  of 
their  far-reaching,  money-getting  schemes,  still  the  spirit 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  227 

of  our  free  institutions  prevailed,  and  men  were  as  little 
hampered  and  trammeled  for  opinion's  sake  as  anywhere 
in  the  world.  When  he  arrived  in  St.  Louis  he  was  surprised 
and  sorely  disappointed  at  the  intolerance  and  persecutions 
of  the  pro-slavery  leaders,  who  encouraged  mobs  and  mur- 
derers against  those  whom  they  were  pleased  to  denounce  as 
"agitators  and  Abolitionists." 

Like  Scotchmen  everywhere,  with  few  exceptions,  he  be- 
lieved that  slavery  was  a  crime,  and  so  expressed  himself 
without  qualification.  Not  many  weeks  after  his  arrival  he 
denounced  slavery  as  a  great  wrong  at  a  slave  auction  on  the 
front  steps  of  the  court-house  in  St.  Louis.  His  candor  and 
sincerity  seemed  to  protect  him  in  doing  and  saying  what 
few  others  could;  but  he  soon  discovered  that  such  methods 
availed  nothing,  and  invited  murder  or  mobbing  by  any  one 
who  continued  it.  He  gave  up  that  plan  of  arraigning  it, 
chagrined,  but  as  firmly  resolved  to  strike  the  heaviest  blows 
against  it,  whenever  opportunity  came,  that  his  power  and 
learning  gave  him  strength  to  deliver. 

He  was  further  surprised  on  reaching  Springfield  to 
learn  that  freedom  of  speech  on  the  slavery  question  was 
as  much  restricted  in  many  parts  of  the  free  State  of  Illinois 
as  in  Missouri,  and  as  dangerous  to  life  and  property,  as  was 
shown  in  the  Love  joy  murder. 

Mr.  Douglas,  after  the  arrival  in  Springfield,  was  a 
friendly  visitor  in  our  home.  As  the  work  on  the  State- 
house  went  on  he  eagerly  watched  the  tall  derricks  with 
their  head-poles  rigged  all  over  with  heavy  chains,  monster 
blocks  and  hooks  that  one  man  could  barely  lift,  with  coil 
after  coil  of  great  ropes  swinging  the  mighty  stones,  some 
of  them  six  feet  in  diameter,  into  place  on  the  rising  col- 
umns, and  saw  other  heavy  stone  and  metals  carried  up  to 
the  cupola,  frieze,  and  upper  cornices  of  the  roof  and 
facades.  As  the  work  went  on  he  became  deeply  interested, 
and  saw  the  building  progress  from  day  to  day  under  the 


228  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

Scotchman's  plans  and  designs.  A  hundred  big-chested, 
brawny-limbed  men  were  fashioning  the  raw  material  and 
raising  the  pile  of  stone,  metal,  and  glass  with  all  their  ener- 
gies, without  the  machinery  and  appliances  then  in  common 
use  further  east. 

Douglas  and  Lincoln,  like  many  others,  were  anxious  for 
its  completion,  a  full  thousand  or  more  of  whom  watched  its 
progress  from  day  to  day  with  increasing  interest,  the  good 
people  of  the  newly-made  capital  city  looking  at  its  progress 
with  honest  pride  as  it  rose  in  strength,  if  not  in  architec- 
tural beauty;  for  how  could  that  be,  coming  out  of  a  design 
that  was  sent  "out  west  ready  made?" 

To  Douglas  it  had  more  than  ordinary  interest;  for  his 
Scotch  friend  was  hoisting  those  outer  works  of  the  much- 
needed  building,  and  he  watched  with  him  as  it  rose.  The 
removal  to  Springfield  was  a  success,  and  the  rising  structure 
gave  hardly  less  satisfaction  to  him  than  it  did  to  Lincoln, 
both  of  whom  gave  the  enterprise  all  their  help  and  strength 
from  the  beginning.  In  the  building  Browne  came  to  know 
and  be  the  friend  of  Douglas,  and  through  him  made  the 
acquaintance  of  the  plain,  honest  man,  whom  Douglas  as- 
sured Browne  after  their  first  meeting,  "that  he  was  the 
strongest  man  in  his  party,  with  striking  possibilities  for 
him  in  the  future,  should  his  party  ever  come  into  power." 

Browne  came  to  know  both  men  well,  and  with  them  a 
thousand  worthy  men  and  leaders  of  the  great  and  rising 
State,  and  gained  a  knowledge  of  its  men  and  affairs  that 
has  strengthened  the  writer  in  the  present  desire  to  tell 
something  of  the  story  and  the  facts  in  their  lives  as  they 
came  under  his  observation  and  knowledge.  From  the  time 
Douglas  was  elected  to  the  Legislature  in  1835,  at  twenty- 
two  years  of  age,  he  was  continually  in  office  to  the  close  of 
his  life.  He  was  in  no  sense  a  seeker  for  place  or  position. 
He  was  elected  and  re-elected,  because  he  was  considered 
the  best  fitted  and  most  eligible  man  in  his  party,  and,  like 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  229 

Lincoln  in  this,  when  he  was  selected  it  was  because  he  was 
judged  to  be  the  best  one  for  it,  without  his  solicitation  or 
request  of  any  kind,  and  b}^  the  unanimous  approval  of  his 
party. 

lie  was  a  strict  believer  in  the  rigid  party  discipline 
of  the  time,  which  was  strengthened  and  enforced  more 
inflexibly  than  ever  by  reason  of  the  Jackson  ascendency 
and  control  of  the  Democratic  party.  Jackson  was  a  man 
of  long  military  training  and  experience,  which  developed 
his  strong  and  decided  opinions,  with  nothing  of  the  com- 
promiser or  concessionist,  like  Clay,  in  his  nature.  No  dif- 
ference what  liberty  there  might  have  been  in  the  discussion 
or  settlement  of  any  party  question  in  his  regime,  there  was 
none  afterwards,  and  the  Democrats  of  that  day  met,  agreed, 
decided,  obeyed,  and  followed  Jackson,  just  as  his  volunteers 
did,  "through  thick  and  thin." 

His  military  service  and  success  more  fully  confirmed 
him  in  his  austere  if  not  autocratic  methods  of  government, 
and  in  the  party  discipline,  through  which  he  ruled  his 
party  and  the  Nation  without  division  or  question  of  his 
power  and  authority.  Thus  he  made  the  Democratic  party 
the  best  disciplined,  strongest  association  of  voters,  acting 
under  a  single  will,  that  could  be  organized  in  the  country, 
from  which  it  grew  to  be  a  strong  party  with  little  or  noth- 
ing left  of  democracy  in  it  besides  the  name. 

Control  of  this  splendid,  well-organized  party  was  an 
achievement  of  incalculable  benefit  to  the  slave  propagand- 
ists, who  embraced  the  opportunity  and  exercised  it  to  the 
extent  of  their  powers.  They  suppressed  and  destroyed  the 
anti-slavery  press  wherever  it  was  possible,  restricted  free- 
dom of  expression  and  speech  against  slavery  in  every  free 
State  with  all  the  power  at  their  command,  and  directed  free 
State  Legislatures,  as  we  have  related,  to  denounce  "agita- 
tion of  the  slavery  question"  as  a  crime  against  the  system 
and  property  rights  of  the  Southern  States.     In  another 


230  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

relation  they  held  slavery  to  be  a  "domestic  institution/' 
over  which  neither  the  people,  nor  the  Nation,  nor  the  free 
States  had  either  power  or  control  in  any  degree,  virtually 
declaring  and  making  slavery  an  institution,  which  "under 
the  Constitution'  could  not  be  restricted  or  interfered 
with,  and  never  the  subject  of  law  except  to  protect  or 
extend    it. 

This  was  the  condition  of  the  free  Eepublic,  under  the 
rule  of  the  Democratic  party,  in  1835,  when  Douglas  was 
rising  to  political  leadership.  He  had  been  brought  up  and 
trained  to  freedom  and  independence  of  men,  free  speech, 
and  a  free  press,  in  line  and  thought  with  Scotchmen  the 
world  over;  but  in  his  rising,  ambition  had  even  then  seized 
and  owned  his  aching  soul.  He  realized  that  although  he 
was  "a.  Douglas,"  alone  against  the  field  on  the  slavery 
question  he  would  be  as  nothing,  "a  foolish,  frivolous  play;" 
hence  he  submitted,  as  he  could  do  no  better  in  his  party, 
with  the  hope  that  he  and  the  men  of  his  belief  could  some 
day  rise  to  power.  All  of  this,  though  distant,  he  saw  and 
helped  to  accomplish  in  the  end,  when  planning  senators  and 
plotting  cabals  felt  the  strength  and  patriotic  fury  of  his 
well-directed,  killing  blows  against  their  sin  and  system; 
but  it  came  in  the  ruin  rather  than  the  triumph  of  his  party. 

The  Whig  party  was  non-committal  or  neutral  at  the 
time  on  the  slavery  question,  but  so  organized  and  led  from 
its  inception  that  its  compromising  leaders  were  ever  ready 
to  help  it  compass  the  protection  and  extension  of  slavery 
as  its  projectors  and  supporters  desired.  It  was  then  that 
there  seemed  no  avenue  to  political  distinction  or  leader- 
ship with  acquiescence  in  the  system  that  threatened  and 
terrorized  the  land,  to  which  Douglas  yielded,  when  Lincoln 
resisted,  and  opposed  the  passage  of  the  "anti-agitation  of 
slavery  resolutions"  in  the  Illinois  Legislature. 

Thus  knowing  the  men  and  the  parties  and  their  polit- 
ical relations,  we  start  out  with   the   two  great  political 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  231 

leaders  of  their  time,  one  of  them  calm,  collected,  and 
thoughtful,  a  moral  hero,  the  other  an  impatient,  industri- 
ous, and  untiring  student,  an  aggressive,  ambitious  man, 
who  saw  no  other  road  open  to  leadership,  and  yielded  that 
he  might  conquer.  In  this  he  was  the  politic  man  of  his 
time;  for  of  all  who  were  and  who  wanted  to  he  leaders  in 
the  free  State  of  Illinois,  there  was  but  Dan  Stone  who 
would  stand  up  with  Lincoln  and  denounce  slavery  as  a 
"system  of  injustice  and  wrong." 

The  rise  and  career  of  Douglas  in  his  State  and  in  the 
Nation,  later,  was  amazing  and  phenomenal,  even  where 
he  had  no  contestant  in  his  party.  After  his  service  in  the 
Legislature  in  1835-36,  he  was,  in  1837,  appointed  United 
States  Eegister  of  the  Land  Office  at  Springfield.  In  the 
same  year  he  was  his  party's  candidate  for  Congress  from 
the  whole  State,  the  largest  district  in  the  United  States, 
as  the  State  then  was  only  one  district.  After  making  a 
strong  canvass  and  establishing  himself  as  one  of  the  ablest 
orators  and  clearest-headed  debaters  in  public  life,  he  was 
defeated  by  five  in  a  vote  of  seventy-five  thousand. 

As  related  before,  he  was  elected  Secretary  of  State  in 
1840.  He  also  took  an  active  part  in  the  canvass  of  the 
State  that  year,  speaking,  lining  up  the  party,  making  friends 
by  thousands  all  over  the  State,  from  which  time  forward  he 
became  the  acknowledged  leader  of  the  controlling  party  in 
Illinois.  When  the  election  was  over,  General  Harrison 
was  elected  President.  Douglas  was  not  expecting  to  be 
longer  in  public  life,  when  he  set  himself  hard  at  work  in 
preparation  for  his  law  business,  which  would  have  remun- 
erated him  several  times  above  the  salary  of  any  office  he 
held,  for  he  had  won  distinction  as  a  pleader,  and  had  an 
office  full  of  present  and  prospective  work  awaiting  him. 

Unexpectedly  to  him,  however,  in  February,  1841,  the 
Legislature  elected  him  one  of  the  judges  of  the  Supreme 
Court  of  the  State,  when  he  was  scarcely  twenty-eight  years 


232  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

of  age.  It  was  during  this  year  that  Ximmo  Browne  made 
his  acquaintance,  who  said  in  referring  to  it: 

"Douglas  was  a  prodigy,  applying  himself  almost  inces- 
santly to  his  work  and  study;  so  much  so  that  we  expected 
to  see  him  break  down  under  the  load.  He  had  cases  in 
two  or  three  courts  that  required  close  attention  almost 
every  day  to  close  them  up.  The  Supreme  Court  was  much 
behind  with  a  pressing  load  of  business  that  was  enough  for 
any  member  of  the  court;  besides  all  these,  he  was  in  a 
course  of  law-reading,  economics,  and  polemics  several  hours 
a  day  or  night.  He  almost  lived  in  a  little  box,  the  library- 
room  of  the  Supreme  Court,  with  several  hundred  volumes 
shelved  on  its  walls,  and  a  long  table  usually  covered  with 
books  and  papers  in  the  center.  His  court  work  took  up 
the  day,  sometimes  part  of  the  evening;  after  which  came  his 
reading  and  study,  which  continued  until  he  was  worn  out 
and  fell  asleep,  sometimes  as  late  as  three  or  four  o'clock 
in  the  morning.  "WTien  the  nights  were  seasonable,  he  put  a 
book  under  his  head  and  took  his  few  hours'  sleep  before 
sunrise,  all  he  got,  when  he  would  get  up  and  study  an  hour 
before  breakfast.  He  kept  his  study  and  labor  up  in  this 
way  for  several  months  in  1841-42,  when  I  was  with  him 
much  of  the  time  and  spent  almost  every  evening  with  him. 

"He  became  so  deeply  interested  in  the  readings  that  he 
could  fairly  read  and  translate  Herodotus  and  Livy  before 
the  year  was  over,  without  help.  He  was  a  marvelous  little 
man,  with  a  chest  as  full  as  my  own,  forty-two  inches,  and 
the  head  of  a  giant.  I  was  amazed  and  astonished  at  the 
man.  I  had  seen  hundreds  tied  down  as  hard  as  boys  and 
men  could  be  to  their  studies,  many  of  them  slow  enough 
to  have  to  keep  at  it  every  working  hour,  but  here  was  a 
man,  bright,  keen,  and  perspicacious,  who  did  voluntarily 
twice  as  much  as  any  one  of  them  I  had  ever  known. 

"Verily  he  is  a  remarkable  man,  and  I  expect  him  to 
gain  the  highest  position  that  persevering  labor  and  pro- 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  233 

found  study  will  qualify  him  for.  He  is  certainly  a  talented 
man,  ahead  of  what  I  estimated,  when  I  knew  him  so  well. 
All  I  fear  of  hun  now  (1847)  is  his  time-serving  devotion 
to  party  and  his  sanguine  hope,  without  prospect  of  fulfill- 
ment in  my  opinion,  that  he  will  bring  the  Democratic  party 
to  a  policy  that  will  permit  free  speech  and  action  on  the 
slavery  question  in  every  State,  North  or  South." 

In  1843,  Douglas  was  nominated  and  elected  to  Congress, 
to  fill  a  vacancy.  This  was  full  in  the  time  of  the  Texan- 
Mexican  struggle,  when  our  country  was  stirred  up  and 
deeply  agitated  and  interested  in  the  contest.  There  was 
little,  if  any,  objection  to  the  acquisition  of  Texas  aside  from 
the  extension  of  slavery;  but  this  was  the  main  reason  for 
the  annexation  and  conquest  of  Mexican  territory  which 
followed.  It  was  planned  for  from  the  beginning  by  the 
slave-promoting  agencies,  to  open  new  fields  for  cotton,  rice, 
and  sugar,  a  market  for  the  Border  State  Negroes  in  which 
to  sell  them,  and  a  balancing  power  against  the  wide  region, 
west  and  northwestward,  that  would  soon  become  free  States 
in  the  Union.  To  counteract  this,  Texas  was  to  be  taken, 
right  or  wrong,  with  or  without  cause  against  Mexico,  an- 
nexed and  admitted  as  a  whole,  and  to  be  chopped  up  into 
five  States  as  they  needed  them. 

Douglas  began  his  political  and  public  life  as  one  of  the 
most  ardent,  zealous,  and  courageous  defenders  of  General 
Jackson,  "following  him  \nth  the  faith  and  devotion  of  a 
Turk  in  the  service  of  the  prophet,"  which  Browne  in  their 
chats  often  told  him,  and  his  "party  with  as  much  zeal  and 
devotion  as  a  new  convert."  The  people  of  that  day  were 
troubled,  as  we  are  to-day,  with  the  unaccountable  desire 
of  reaching  out,  grasping  and  taking  all  the  territory  within 
reach  that  we  can  get,  without  no  better  reason  than  a  child's 
desire  for  a  new  toy. 

James  K.  Polk,  of  Tennessee,  was  nominated  by  the 
Democratic  party  in  1844,  in  accord  with  his  own  belief  and 


234  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

the  party's  declaration  in  favor  of  the  annexation  of  Texas, 
Heni-y  Clay  for  the  third  time  was  the  Whig  candidate  for 
President  against  Polk.  The  election  of  Polk  was  expected 
to  result  in  war  with  Mexico.  Clay's  election  would  have 
been  an  uncertainty  as  to  the  annexation.  Many  of  his 
supporters  were  opposed  to  the  slave-extension  policy,  many 
were  opposed  to  war,  regardless  of  slavery.  Clay  was  op- 
posed to  war,  and  the  South  suspected  him,  though  he  was 
a  servant  and  compromiser  in  the  interests  of  slavery,  as  he 
had  always  been.  The  Free  State  people  justly  feared  him, 
and  believed  that  he  would  yield  to  the  policy  of  annexation 
and  a  consequent  slavery  extension,  as  he  had  always  yielded 
to  the  behests  of  the  propaganda  in  their  emergencies.  Thus 
discredited  and  doubted  in  both  sections,  he  was  defeated 
when  he  fully  expected  that  his  party  would  be  successful, 
as  it  had  been  in  1840  in  the  election  of  Harrison.  All  the 
more  did  he  hope  for  success  because  of  the  apostasy  of 
President  Tyler,  who,  on  Harrison's  death,  one  month  after 
his  inauguration,  became  President,  and  at  once  became  a 
supple  servant  of  the  slave-power  and  the  Democratic  party. 

Clay,  besides  believing  much  in  his  own  strength,  hoped 
for  much  from  the  punishment  and  disapproval  with  which 
the  people  would  smite  the  apostate  turncoat  and  faithless 
Whig  Administration;  but,  as  ususal,  the  man  whom  the 
people  doubted  was  beaten.  Polk  was  elected,  and  Clay,  after 
forty  years  of  conspicuous  public  life,  was  a  sorely-disap- 
pointed, politically-hopeless  old  man. 

Douglas  was  re-elected  to  Congress  in  1844,  along  with 
Polk,  annexation,  and  the  complete  ascendency  of  modern 
Democracy  under  the  certain  supremacy  of  the  slave-power. 
Although  Lincoln  and  Douglas  were  distinct  and  forceful 
men,  each  in  his  way,  yet  as  rising  men,  party  organizers, 
and  leaders,  there  were  many  parallels  in  their  lives  and 
history.  Lincoln  had  the  independence  and  heroism  to  be 
one  of  the  few  men  who  could  organize  and  create  a  party 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  235 

or  following  in  his  chosen  cause  of  reform.  Douglas  rose  as 
rapidly  to  be  a  party  leader,  without  an  equal,  of  that  faction 
of  his  party  that  would  remain  loyal  and  did  so,  without  a 
rival.  The  party  as  a  whole  had  able  leaders,  such  as  Gen- 
eral Cass,  Benton,  Jere  Black,  Governor  Ewing,  and  many 
others,  wise,  able  statesmen,  all  capable  in  their  time,  but 
no  one  of  them  in  a  lifetime  service  rose  to  the  control  and 
power  that  Douglas  did  in  a  few  j^ears,  at  the  beginning  of 
his  public  life,  when  he  came  to  be  leader  without  dispute, 
with  as  much  of  absolutism  in  his  control  as  Jackon  held, 
except  the  pro-slavery  faction. 

Lincoln  and  Douglas  were  about  the  same  age.  Both 
were  of  and  from  the  people,  who  pursued  some  active  in- 
dustry and  earned  their  living.  Both  of  them  were  students 
who  obtained  their  education  in  an  irregular  but  persever- 
ing manner,  getting  the  greater  part  independently  of 
schools,  scholastic  forms,  or  disciplinary  methods,  yet  gain- 
ing wider  knowledge  and  more  certain  information  than 
many  pretentious  scholars,  who  enviously  called  them  "back- 
woods lawyers."  They  rose  to  leadership  in  the  same  pro- 
fession, in  the  same  courts,  towns,  and  State.  They  were 
friendly  associates  sometimes  on  the  same  side  of  a  law- 
suit, but  more  frequently  opposing  each  other.  They  were 
the  rising,  noted  young  men  of  bars  and  courts,  as  able  and 
learned  as  any  in  the  land.  A  personal  contest  with  each 
other  in  law  or  politics  was  never  disagreeable;  they  were 
men  above  such  petty  living  and  judgment,  who  always  came 
out  of  their  personal  contests  with  more  respect  for  and 
better  opinion  of  each  other.  They  were  alike  in  never 
seeking  leadership  or  position,  and  always  getting  it  in  un- 
disputed unanimity.  They  were  able,  clear-headed  men,  who 
never  undervalued  the  abilities  and  qualifications  of  each 
other. 

Lincoln's  rise,  progress,  and  career  were  far  beyond  the 
ordinary  course  of  events  in  the  admissible  adaptation  and 


236  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

power  of  the  man.  No  other  appeared  who  could  have  risen 
up  to  lead  when  and  where  he  did.  No  other  could  have 
been  independent  as  he  was,  and  retain  the  confidence  of  a 
party  or  following.  It  was  given  him  alone  to  do  that. 
Many  were  courageous  and  outspoken,  but  he  alone  of  all  of 
them  could  lead  a  party  in  his  independent  way.  Others, 
able  and  determined  and  wise — men  like  Gerrit  Smith,  Garri- 
son, Phillips,  Seward,  and  Weed — could  only  lead  a  faction. 
His  work  and  the  man  himself  were  dovetailed,  harmoni- 
ously fitted  for  it  in  every  movement  and  detail  of  the  period. 
In  work  and  progress  he  was  the  man  above  and  superior 
to  human  contrivings,  beyond  ordinary  conceptions  and 
knowledge.  It  was  providential,  and  he  was  the  only  man 
of  that  time  who  could  have  made  and  led  the  party  which 
he  did. 

In  the  same  sense  Douglas  Avas  the  only  leader  who  could 
rise,  or  did  rise  at  least,  to  lead  the  great  body  of  Amer- 
icans in  the  Democratic  party  in  the  free  States,  without 
dividing  authority  under  dictation  from  any  person  or  propa- 
ganda. He  led  the  Democratic  party  as  no  other  man  but 
Jackson  ever  had  done,  who  led  it  in  the  friendly  service  of 
slavery  and  its  extension.  Douglas  succeeded  and  led  it  as 
absolutely  to  a  position  of  expressed  neutrality  on  the  slavery 
question,  apparently  yielding,  as  will  appear,  but  always  to 
a  point  short  of  disloyalty,  where  he  would  go  no  farther 
nor  suffer  another  to  go.  He  Avould  yield  to  the  point  where 
the  slave  oligarchy  gained  nothing,  but  distrusted,  doubted, 
and  finally  realized  that  neither  Douglas  nor  the  great 
Democratic  party  would  submit  to  pro-slavery  supremacy, 
nor  follow  it  into  insurrection,  nor  permit  it  to  extend 
slavery  into  any  Territory  without  the  consent  of  the  people 
living  in  it.  The  heroic,  undisputed  leader  of  his  party, 
which  no  other  man  could  have  led  so  well,  was  at  last 
brought  in  the  fullness  of  the  contest  to  the  loyal  support 
of  the  Union  against  all  its  enemies. 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  237 

Lincoln  could  not  in  the  critical  juncture  have  led  the 
Democratic  party.  No  man  but  a  Democrat  could  have  led 
it  to  such  results  in  such  a  hotly-contested  partisan  period; 
and  no  Democrat  could  have  led  it  as  well  as  Douglas,  who 
led  the  time-honored  party  of  human  rights  away  from  seces- 
sion, with  Logan,  Mc demand,  the  Blairs,  E wings,  Stan- 
tons,  Dix,  Holt,  Jere  Black,  and  others  by  the  thousands,  to 
the  support  of  the  Union  and  Mr.  Lincoln's  Administration. 

Douglas  entered  Congress  in  the  culminating  period  of 
the  Texas  accession  and  the  war  with  Mexico.  He  became  a 
leader  and  a  conspicuous  representative  at  once.  He  was 
made  chairman  of  the  Committee  on  Territories  in  the 
House  in  1844.  He  introduced  a  resolution  recognizing  the 
independence  of  Texas,  expressing  sympathy  with  our  people 
in  their  struggle  against  Mexico,  and  favoring  annexation. 
There  was  opposition,  but  the  resolution  was  carried  by  a 
large  majorit}^,  which  was  tantamount  to  a  declaration  of 
war.  Li  doing  this  he  accepted  existing  conditions,  drifted 
along  without  contention  with  the  pro-slavery  people,  and 
by  unanimous  approval  became  firmly  established  as  leader 
of  the  party  in  the  free  and  some  of  the  slave  States,  notably 
Missouri,  as  much  as  he  had  been  in  Illinois. 

There  was  a  strong  sentiment  on  the  part  of  many  of  our 
people  in  all  parties  of  that  time  in  favor  of  annexation,  as 
a  line  of  policy  on  this  continent  that  should  prevail.  Doug- 
las held  strongly  to  that  belief,  as  Mr.  Webster  did,  who  was 
Secretary  of  State  in  the  Harrison  Administration  when  it 
came  into  power  in  1841.  He  continued  in  the  Tyler  suc- 
cession, which  was  well,  as  it  gave  him  opportunity  to  com- 
plete the  treaty  with  Britain  on  our  northeastern  boundary, 
and  to  retain  all  that  was  possible  of  the  Oregon  Territory, 
This  was  fortunate,  for  if  the  slaveholders'  policy  had  pre- 
vailed in  its  entirety,  Britain  would  probably  have  held  not 
only  a  part,  but  all  of  the  territory  that  is  now  the  States 
of  Oregon  and  Washington,     There  was  no  man  in  public 


238  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

life  at  the  time  who  was  more  capable,  indefatigable,  and 
determined,  nor  to  whom  more  credit  is  due  for  holding  that 
territoT}'  from  the  grasp  of  Britain,  than  Douglas.  He 
believed  in  what  he  called  the  destiny  of  the  United  States, 
its  eventually  holding  undivided  control  of  the  Xorth  Amer- 
ican Continent,  including  Central  America,  the  Antilles,  and 
the  Isthmus  of  Panama,  all  except  Mexico.  This  he  firmly 
believed  in  and  persistently  worked  up  to  in  his  policy  wher- 
ever it  was  possible  to  advance  it.  Our  progress  in  that 
direction  since  the  settlement  of  our  internal  dissensions  is 
confirmatory  proof,  were  it  necessary,  of  the  wisdom  and 
sagacity  of  his  statesmanship. 

In  the  work  of  completing  the  capitol,  Browne  remained 
at  Springfield  most  of  the  time  up  to  1846.  Douglas  was 
a  frequent  visitor  and  an  interested  spectator  as  the  work 
progressed;  besides,  they  often  spent  their  evenings  to- 
gether in  the  Judge's  office  when  it  was  convenient  and 
both  were  in  town.  Browne  was  often  away  in  St.  Louis, 
where  he  was  carrying  on  other  work.  After  Douglas  en- 
tered Congress  he  was  away  half  of  the  time,  perhaps  more. 
This  temporary  absence  strengthened  their  friendship  and 
freshened  their  desire  for  a  talk  or  a  discussion,  some  of 
which  were  as  strong  and  earnest  as  they  could  make  them. 


CHAPTER  XI. 

AFTER  war  had  been  declared  against  Mexico,  and  the 
southern  proslavery  policy  had  been  fully  disclosed  and 
Douglas  had  given  the  slavery  extension  plan  his  sup- 
port, in  an  animated  discussion,  Browne  said:  "Believing  you 
to  be  an  anti-slavery  man  at  heart,  true  to  the  principles  of 
a  free  country,  free  speech,  a  free  press,  and  an  honest  re- 
ward for  labor,  it  surprises  me  that  you  should  in  any  con- 
tingency support  this  slavery-spreading  and  slavery-power 
exalting  measure.  The  traditions  and  teachings  of  our 
ancestry  are  against  it,  the  light  of  civilization  is  against  it, 
and  Great  Britain,  monarchical  Britain,  has  set  the  world 
an  example,  and  has  under  leadership  of  Wilberforce,  with 
his  humanity-believing  followers,  abolished  slavery  in  all  its 
colonies,  and  has  declared  that  the  slave-trade  is  piracy,  a 
crime  which  is  to  be  swept  from  the  seas." 

To  this  Douglas  replied:  "First,  did  you  not  know  that 
what  we  have  of  this  system  of  wrong  came  from  your  and 
my  ancestral  Britain — a  legacy,  a  result  of  their  thrifty, 
world-wide  plundering,  which  is  no  longer  profitable  to 
them  in  distant  colonial  management?  They  have  righted 
up  on  moral  grounds,  and  are  calling  the  world  sinners 
who  are  not  now  under  their  example. 

"We  must  concede  that  the  system,  wrong  as  it  is,  has 
grown  into  our  industrial  and  commercial  life  so  far  and 
in  so  many  ways  that  it  will  take  a  long  period  of  time  for 
its  gradual  amelioration  and  removal;  and  the  wise,  patri- 
otic help  of  every  peacefully-inclined  citizen  to  accomplish 
this,  or  to  prevent  a  conflict,  which,  should  it  come,  meas- 

239 


240  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

ured  by  the  strength  and  determination  of  our  people, 
will  be  the  most  frightful  and  destructive  for  centuries. 
It  will  leave  both  sections  impoverished  and,  perchance, 
so  helpless  as  to  fall  an  easy  prey  to  moral-minded  Britain 
and  her  conscientious  allies  on  the  Continent  of  Europe. 
They  have  never  found  a  people  too  poor  or  uncivilized 
to  rob  and  oppress,  like  the  Hindoos,  who,  earning  ten 
cents  a  da}'',  or  less,  must  still  pay  tribute  out  of  that;  or 
the  naked,  wild  African,  who  must  trade  his  tusks  of  ivory, 
his  sandal-wood  and  spices,  at  the  point  of  a  gun,  for  the 
manufacturer's  bauble  of  an  idol  in  bronze." 

Browne  replied:  "I  concede  the  force  of  much  of  what 
you  say  and  the  truth  of  the  grasping  policy  of  Britain 
and  other  monarchical  nations ;  but  your  premises  are  wrong. 
Men  come  out  of  barabarism  only  by  degrees.  These  nations 
justify  their  ^revenue-raising  systems'  in  this,  that  it  is 
better  for  these  people,  barbarous  and  half-civilized,  to 
pay  onerous  tribute,  and  trade  their  ivory  and  other  valu- 
ables for  trifles  rather  than  continue  their  bloody  strife 
of  killing  and  sometimes  eating  one  another.  These  na- 
tions claim  that  if  the  native  does  trade  his  ivory  tusk, 
which,  in  his  savage  life,  is  only  a  bludgeon  or  something 
of  as  little  good  to  him,  for  a  tin  or  pewter  god,  he  has  seen 
a  civilized  man,  or  one  that  should  be,  with  a  shirt  and 
coat,  and  made  an  advance  perhaps  more  than  his  race  had 
made  in  a  thousand  years.  This  would  be  an  achievement, 
and  perhaps  he  would  follow  the  example;  and  if  he  could 
come  to  wearing  a  shirt,  the  next  generation  might  be  ex- 
pected to  make  further  progress:  wear  more  clothes  and 
learn  much  that  is  good  along  with  so  much  that  is  bad, 
as  we  all  know. 

"Bibles  go  with  these  bad  policies,  and  are  translated 
into  their  own  tongue — the  Book  that  has  spread  more 
enlightenment  and  better  ideas  of  living  and  more  freedom 
than  all  other  books,  plans,  and  processes  since  the  world 


TEE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  241 

began.  I  think  the  trade-expandmg  nations  have  done 
much  good,  along  with  much  that  should  not  have  been,  and 
is  disgraceful.  Be  assured,  also,  that  no  one  will  unite  with 
you  in  more  emphatic  denunciation  of  these  evil  policies 
and  processes  than  the  great  body  of  liberty-loving  human- 
ity, as  well  as  trade-expanding  Englishmen,  Scotchmen,  and 
Irishmen,  who  have  been  the  chief  workers  and  laborers 
in  making  this  Eepublic  habitable  for  man  and  what  it 
promises  to  be. 

"But  to  the  main  question:  Slavery  is  a  wrong  and  an 
injustice  so  flagrant,  palpable,  and  bad  in  every  way  as  to 
be  an  evil  beyond  compensation  to  any  nation  that  has 
trade,  commerce,  civilizing,  or  sensible  methods  in  prog- 
ress. In  short,  it  is  such  an  evil,  such  a  widespreading 
and  debasing  one,  so  inimical  and  injurious  to  free  thought, 
free  speech,  and  a  just  reward  for  labor,  so  unprofitable  to 
the  people  who  live  immediately  under  its  blight  and  those 
indirectly  shorn  of  part  of  their  wages,  as  our  men  a.re  here 
in  this  work,  so  universally  known  to  be  wrong,  that  any 
people  sufficiently  informed  to  be  able  to  read  current  events 
should  set  about  it  at  once  to  adopt  some  plan,  not  of  tem- 
porizing with  it  in  any  way,  but  to  abolish  it  at  once  and 
forever;  for,  except  the  few  thousands  who  are  living  on 
the  products  of  the  black  man's  labor,  all  the  other  millions 
would  be  immediately  and  directly  benefited. 

"The  process  against  it  should  be  as  much  stronger  and 
more  powerful  than  the  millions  who  suffer  from  its  effects 
are  greater  than  the  thousands  who  live  by  this  oppression. 
This  should  be  done  at  once  before  all  the  Southern  people 
are  deluded  into  support  of  a  system  that  is  rapidly  turning 
the  Republic  into  an  aristocracy.  There  should  be  men 
in  this  free,  spreading  land  to  take  up  the  cause  of  man 
against  avarice,  wrong,  and  usurpation,  as  Wilberforce, 
Canning,  and  Chalmers  did.  If  this  were  done,  there  will 
be  thousands  to  follow  the  cause  of  right  as  there  have  al- 
16 


242  ABBAHAM  LINCOLN. 

ways  been  when  the  time  and  the  issues  are  ready;  and  they 
surely  are  so  in  this  slavery-cursed  Nation  to-day. 

"If,  in  doing  right,  conflict  should  come,  let  the  responsi- 
bility for  it  rest  where  it  should — on  the  shoulders  of  those 
who  are  perpetuating  a  wrong  like  that  for  which  God  has 
virtually  extinguished  many  of  the  most  learned,  skilled, 
and  powerful  nations  of  antiquity,  leaving  little  of  their 
once  dominant  power,  .  save  obelisks,  carved  monoliths, 
tombs,  sphinxes,  pyramids,  and  charming  ruins." 

Douglas  was  much  interested,  but  not  in  any  way  dis- 
pleased with  this  earnest  discussion,  of  which  we  are  only 
giving  the  substance.  He  replied:  "Your  policy  and  ideas 
may  be  right  on  moral  grounds,  but  is  no  more  now  than 
an  abstraction,  utterly  impossible  of  execution  in  our  pres- 
ent situation,  unless  it  come  in  war.  For  this  none  are  pre- 
pared; certainly  not  the  anti-slavery  people,  who,  in  organi- 
zation, are  not  as  compact  and  fully  held  to  one  idea  and 
purpose  as  the  slaveholders  have  been  ever  since  the  acces- 
sion of  Calhoun  to  leadership  of  their  faction,  as  early 
as  1832. 

"There  is,  to  my  mind,  only  one  practical  solution  of  the 
slavery  question  left  for  us  if  we  are  to  remain  one  people: 
that  is,  to  treat  and  deal  with  slavery  as  a  domestic  insti- 
tution, as  the  founders  of  the  Nation  and  the  framers  of 
the  Constitution  left  it,  under  the  entire  control  of  the 
States  where  it  exists,  with  Congressional  restriction  to 
Southern  latitudes  should  it  become  aggressive.  If  it  is  so 
dealt  with,  the  West  and  the  great  Northwest,  with  their 
stronger,  more  robust,  more  determined,  and  vastly  greater 
population  will  soon  outrun  in  every  way  the  slavery  insti- 
tution that  must,  in  the  nature  of  things,  be  limited  to 
a  few  Southern  States.  Many  of  these  would  soon  provide 
a  system  of  gradual  emancipation  if  agitation  upon  this 
subject  could  be  discontinued  and  the  people's  mind  set  to 
rest  upon  some   fairly  agreeable   settlement  entered  into 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  243 

by  both  sections  in  friendly  consideration  of  the  great  is- 
sues involved. 

"It  would  be  nothing  less  than  folly  for  me  to  acquiesce 
in  your  ideas.  The  great  Democratic  party  of  the  Nation 
would  discard  me,  or  any  other  man,  or  any  and  all  its 
leaders,  who  would  attempt  to  lead  it  in  that  direction.  It 
is  a  great  body  of  men,  including  many  kinds  of  people, 
with  greath'-varying  beliefs  and  ideas  of  government,  but 
all  united  on  the  idea  of  the  greatest  freedom  to  the  indi- 
vidual compatible  with  public  safety  under  existing  condi- 
tions, but  with  positive  limits  and  bounds,  past  which  no 
one  can  safely  pass.  He  who  would  rise  in  its  esteem  and 
be  trusted  by  this  great  body  of  freemen  must  first  learn 
to  follow  and  obey.  I  very  much  regret  your  position,  but 
will  make  no  effort  to  change  it.  We  are  friends,  and  will 
remain  so.  As  such,  I  must  caution  you  against  frequent 
expressions  of  your  extremist  opinions  on  the  question; 
and,  as  you  are  not  in  public  life,  and  not  expecting  to  enter 
it,  there  will  be  no  sufficient  reason  that  you  should  engage 
in  the  discussion  of  the  subject.  You  are,  by  your  own 
definition,  an  'Abolitionist,'  outside  of  all  existing  parties, 
holding  to  a  belief  that,  if  earnestly  expressed  in  many 
places  in  this  State,  might  put  3'^our  liberty  and  even  your 
life  in  jeopardy." 

Erowne  was  something  surprised,  but  pleased  by  the 
candor  and  artless  statement  of  Douglas.  He  soon  re- 
gained his  equanimit}',  and  replied:  "I  am  not  expecting, 
and  do  not  desire  public  office  or  position  of  any  kind  what- 
ever; indeed,  I  seldom  cast  a  vote.  You  are  doubtless  cor- 
rect in  saying  that  you  must  pursue  your  present  course 
if  you  are  to  remain  and  rise  in  your  party,  or  in  any  party 
of  the  present;  for  both  the  Democratic  and  the  Whig  par- 
ties are  servants  of  the  slave  power,  differing  only  in  degree; 
and  I  regret,  more  sincerely  than  you  seem  to  do,  my  iso- 
lation and  possible  danger,  the  deplorable  condition  that 


244  ABB  AH  AM  LINCOLN. 

exists  in  this  pretentious  land  of  freedom,  where  human 
rights  are  languishing  under  the  heel  of  as  relentless  an 
oligarchy  as  holds  power  in  any  kingdom  of  Europe. 

"I  am  grateful  for  your  friendship,  and  respect  your 
ahilities,  which  I  know  are  real,  sustained,  too,  in  such  per- 
severing assiduity  that  your  position  must  be  a  distinguished 
one,  or  nothing;  but  remember  the  old  Scotch  legend,  that 
'avarice  and  greed  are  nae  choice  bodies,  and  always  con- 
vert or  destroy  their  followers.'  Wlien  you  can  serve  these 
slave-believing,  slave-spreading  gentlemen  no  longer,  you 
will  remember  Wolsey.  I  assure  you  that,  without  de- 
siring to  be  a  partisan  of  any  kind,  I  shall  never 
ally  myself  to  any  political  body  that  will  not  destroy  as 
great  an  evil  as  human  slavery  wherever  it  has  opportunity, 
and  that  I  will  preserve  the  life  or  the  reputation  of  a 
Scotchman  who  is  not  afraid  to  express  his  opinion,  but 
who  has  the  sense  and  propriety  not  to  interfere  where 
nothing  can  be  accomplished." 

This  sketch  has  been  given  to  illustrate  the  condition  of 
public  feeling  in  the  West  in  such  States  as  Illinois,  In- 
diana, and  Ohio  at  that  time,  when  an  anti-slavery  man 
was  as  much  out  of  place  in  any  of  them  as  in  the  border 
or  slave  States  of  Kentucky  or  Missouri.  The  body  of  the 
people  were  not  in  favor  of  slavery,  but  they  looked  upon  it 
as  a  subject  settled  in  law  and  by  compromises,  and  dread- 
ing any  reopening  of  the  question  that  had  divided  the  sec- 
tions so  long.  They  became  intolerant,  and  served  the 
slave-owners  so  well  that  they  suppressed  free  speech  and 
opinion  on  the  subject  for  two  generations  or  more. 

The  difficulties  will  be  better  understood  as  we  proceed. 
The  task  ahead  of  Mr.  Lincoln  seemed  an  impossible  one 
when  seen  from  the  point  of  his  first  revolt  against  the 
resolutions  in  the  Illinois  Legislature;  but  in  a  providential 
way  a  party  grew  up  and  sustained  him.  This  support  and 
party,  however,  could  not  have  taken  him  through  the  ap- 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  245 

preaching  conflict.  It  was  necessary  that  the  Democratic 
party,  then  altogether  indifferent  to  the  turpitude  and  pur- 
poses of  the  slave-leaders  must,  nevertheless,  if  he  was  to 
succeed,  come  to  his  support  without  doubt  or  uncertainty. 
Hence  a  leader  like  Douglas,  who  could  not  be  taken  be- 
yond the  bounds  of  loyalty  to  his  countr}^  capable,  experi- 
enced, and  fearless,  was  a  providential  necessity,  with  his 
party  intact  on  the  same  lines  and  in  the  same  sense  of 
duty  that  Lincoln  was.  We  have  seen  similarity  in  the  rise 
and  progress  of  these  leaders;  and  now  that  they  came  to 
lead  a  party  forming  and  a  party  formed  in  the  same  even- 
tual cause  is  the  most  striking  and  important  fact  of  all  and 
as  providential  in  one  as  the  other. 

Judge  Douglas  introduced  Mr.  Lincoln  to  Nimmo 
Bro-RTie  soon  after  Browne's  arrival  in  Springfield.  Mr. 
Lincoln  was  an  interested  spectator  on  the  capitol  building 
as  it  progressed.  He  was  always  a  welcome  visitor.  His 
manner  was  so  easy  and  affable,  his  genuine  friendly  ad- 
dress and  his  unfailing  humor,  that  were  all  satisfying,  like 
the  garments  he  wore,  which  hung  loosely  and  easily  on 
him,  were  always  with  him,  were  all  so  plain  and  entertain- 
ing, that  Browne  declared: 

*'He  was  the  most  agreeable,  wittiest,  and  most  entertain- 
ing talker  I  ever  met.  His  bones,  angular  joints,  promi- 
nent facial  features,  his  loose  integuments  about  his  face 
and  neck,  although  young,  his  careless,  irregular  walk  and 
action,  his  long  arms  and  sometimes  awkward  motions,  were 
all  forgotten  as  he  engaged  you  in  conversation  and  illus- 
tration. Every  feature  on  his  worn-looking  face  brightened, 
the  most  penetrating  eye  that  I  ever  saw  fired  up,  as  I  felt, 
with  the  light  and  strength  of  a  deeply  earnest  soul.  He 
would  interest  us  all  a  few  minutes,  pass  up  or  down  the 
street  in  the  same  thoughtful,  careless-looking  way,  almost 
every  day. 

''^'^ery  soon  after  I  met  him,  I  asked  Judge  Douglas, 


246  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

*What  of  your  friend,  Lincoln,  tlie  thoughtful,  pensive,  old- 
looking  young  man  whom  you  introduced?'  Douglas  re- 
plied: 'He  is  the  ablest  man  in  his  party  in  the  State,  and 
a  leader  among  men  in  anything  he  undertakes.  He  has 
an  ease  and  familiarity  of  manner  that  wins  the  respect 
and  generally  the  confidence  of  every  one  he  meets.  As 
a  pleader  before  a  jury  he  seems  in  congenial  relation  at 
once;  and  before  any  jury  that  I  have  ever  seen  him  ad- 
dress there  was  little  use  for  any  lawyer  to  oppose  him, 
except  in  matters  of  fact,  and  in  these  he  always  conceded 
the  truth  in  the  cases  which  he  tried;  but  as  an  advocate 
he  has  no  equal  before  a  jury,  and  if  he  has  ever  met  one, 
I  have  never  heard  of  it.  He  managed  the  capital  removal 
to  this  city.  In  an  easy,  ingratiating  way  he  served  so  many 
members  in  such  useful  and  timely  help  about  something 
of  their  own  under  way  on  which  their  standing  at  home 
depended,  in  which  Lincoln  helped  them  out  so  well  that 
he  carried  the  measure  through,  with  help,  of  course,  but 
only  as  he  directed  it.  It  did  not  seem  possible  that  any 
other  man  in  or  out  of  the  Legislature  could  have  done  it. 
He  is  a  conscientious,  studious,  thoughtful  man,  always  well 
prepared  for  any  work  he  undertakes.  He  has  qualified  him- 
self and  holds  his  leading  position,  like  most  of  us,  mainly 
thr'ough  his  own  application,  perseverance,  and  exertion. 
You  will  be  pleased  with  his  acquaintance  and  delighted 
with  his  anecdotes,  and  would  be  more  so  if  you  were  not 
a  Scotchman.  We  have  often  contended  in  the  courts  and 
on  the  stump,  but  have  never  allowed  such  differing  inter- 
ests to  interrupt  the  course  of  our  friendship,  which  has 
always  been  as  sincere  between  us  as  you  have  seen  it.' " 

The  acquaintance  made  with  both  of  these  able  gentlemen 
continued,  with  no  incident  to  disturb  its  even  current,  until 
Browne  had  completed  his  work  on  the  State-house,  about 
1846,  and  was  about  returning  to  St.  Louis.  Lincoln  met 
Browne,  and  the  two  sat  down  on  the  stone  steps  for  a  few 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  247 

minutes'  talk.  Lincoln  said,  in  substance:  "I  regret  to  learn 
that  you  are  about  leaving  us.  We  have  been  pleased  with 
your  stay  among  us,  and  your  work  has  been  well  done. 
Judge  Douglas,  whose  abilities  we  all  respect  regardless 
of  party,  being  so  intimate  a  friend  that,  opposed  as  we  are 
in  political  matters,  I  have  felt  a  delicacy  in  making  more 
than  a  friendly  acquaintance  heretofore;  but  now  that  you 
are  leaving,  I  feel  that  may  be  I  have  not  been  as  cordial 
as  I  should  have  been.  If  so,  there  has  been  no  intention. 
I  would  have  enjoyed  a  closer  acquaintance.  I  have  only 
lately  realized  that  you  are  about  leaving  us,  and  the  inter- 
est is  much  increased  as  I  learn  you  are  strongly  against 
slavery,  on  which  point  we  can  fully  agree." 

Browne  replied,  giving,  in  substance,  his  discussion  and 
disagreement  with  Douglas  and  his  rejoinders  as  related 
above,  ending  with,  "I  shall  not  vote  with  or  belong  to 
any  party  that  consents  or  submits  to  further  strengthen- 
ing or  extending  slavery;  and  I  will  do  all  in  my  power  to 
aid  the  party  that  takes  up  the  cause  of  freedom  against 
it  willingly,  and  with  neither  hope  nor  desire  for  office  or 
emolument  in  the  work.'* 

They  had  a  friendly  parting.  Lincoln  checked  Browne's 
ardor  against  slavery  at  the  time,  saying:  "You  must  be 
patient.  In  the  very  nature  of  our  institutions,  changes 
come  very  slowly,  and  the  contest  over  slavery  will  be  long 
and  tedious.  The  time  will  come  when  a  man  of  your  learn- 
ing and  experience  can  be  of  much  service.  You  can  not 
do  much  now,  and  prudence  requires  you  to  bear  and  be 
silent,  that  you  may  not  rashly  get  into  trouble  that  will 
affect  nothing.  I  sincerely  regret  your  leaving,  and,  God 
helping  you,  I  shall  always  be  anxious  to  hear  of  your 
welfare." 

Douglas  and  Lincoln  were  the  adversaries,  the  leaders 
of  two  strongly-organized  parties  and  as  strongly  contend- 
ing for  office  and  control.     There  were  many  times,  in  the 


248  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN, 

rough-and-tumble  contests  of  the  campaigns,  that  in  some 
places  the  contentions  grew  so  warm  that  the  disputers 
and  their  followers  often  came  to  blows,  sometimes  result- 
ing in  personal  enmities  that  lasted  a  lifetime;  but  these 
two  strong  men  of  sense,  leading  partisans,  whose  intem- 
perate zeal  got  them  into  many  difficulties,  always  held 
respectful  and  friendly  relations,  at  least  we  who  saw 
most  of  their  personal  relations  always  believed  that  their 
respect  and  friendship  for  each  other  was  sincere. 

Political  essayists,  Avith  more  zeal  than  information, 
and  prejudiced  partisan  biographers,  who  have  written 
preconceived  ideals,  have  distorted  the  facts  in  the  lives 
of  these  men  to  alarming  proportions,  and  have  built  up 
a  line  of  hostilities  between  them,  formed  on  rumor,  which, 
fortunately,  is  more  formidable  in  their  contributions  and 
histories  than  in  all  the  world  besides.  These  should  all 
be  forgotten.  The  smooth-running  current  of  respect  and 
personal  regard  that  always  existed  should  be  told,  espe- 
cially when  it  is  known,  as  we  knew  it  to  be  true,  that 
the  disputes  and  differences  between  them  were  no  more 
serious  or  distracting — often  less  so — than  those  between 
any  other  two  leading  members  of  the  Springfield  bar. 

Mr.  Lincoln  was  elected  and  re-elected  to  the  Illinois 
Legislature,  commencing  in  1834,  for  four  successive  terms 
of  two  years,  up  to  1842.  During  the  period,  the  capital 
removal  was  made,  which  was  not  completed  until  1839. 
He  gave  the  work  much  of  his  time  and  attention,  attending 
to  and  looking  after  many  of  the  details  in  person.  It  was 
during  this  period  that  he  was  establishing  himself  in  his 
profession  in  the  new  capital.  He  began  his  work  as  the 
law  partner  of  his  teacher  and  comrade.  Major  Stuart,  who 
was  with  him  in  the  Legislature  and  in  other  political  em- 
ployment for  so  much  of  the  time  that  their  law  business 
languished  and  brought  small  revenue  by  reason  of  their 
quasi-public  occupation.     The  ways  in  which  holding  office 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  249 

and  being  a  candidate  for  it  hinder  and  embarass  a  young 
lawyer  in  the  beginning  of  his  career  in  obtaining  business 
or  reasonable  pay  for  it  are  endless.  The  business  of  be- 
ing a  representative,  under  the  circumstances  in  which  Lin- 
coln held  the  office  for  Sangamon  County,  was  almost  a 
profitless  one.  Such  a  place,  in  those  days,  kept  him  in 
some  kind  of  party  or  public  service  constantly.  It  was  the 
same,  ordinarily,  of  representatives  of  the  larger  counties 
of  a  growing  State  and  thrifty,  growing  communities,  towns, 
and  cities  all  over  it.  In  a  greater  degree  than  any  other 
of  that  day  was  it  true  of  the  representative  compassing  and 
completing  the  work  of  the  capital  removal. 

To  be  on  friendly  and  agreeable  terms  with  the  people 
there  were  many  things  to  do  for  them  that  took  time,  for 
which  there  was  no  thought  of  remuneration.  There  were 
meetings,  caucuses,  Conventions  for  party  and  local  pro- 
moting enterprises,  all  of  which  he  would  have  to  attend, 
understand  the  particular  objects  for  which  they  were  as- 
sembled, keep  in  touch  with  the  work,  and  aid  in  its  prog- 
ress in  every  way  that  might  become  necessary.  Many  a 
friend  who  had  been  helpful  in  the  canvass  or  after  election 
would  often  need  something  done  in  the  courts  or  the  various 
public  offices.  Committees  had  to  be  made,  and  their  work 
assigned  them.  Addresses  were  necessary  in  this  place  and 
that.  These,  and  many  other  things,  were  in  the  line  of 
his  ordinary  work,  and  had  to  be  looked  after  carefully, 
receive  prompt  and  proper  attention,  if  he  was  to  keep 
his  place  as  a  man  of  the  people,  ready  and  willing  for  what- 
ever might  come,  in  and  out  of  season. 

Thousands  of  young  men  all  over  our  country  have 
passed  through  a  training  and  pupilage  of  this  kind;  but 
there  are  few  who  did  as  much  as  he  did,  or  who  continued 
it  for  as  much  as  eight  years.  He  was,  for  part  of  this 
period,  the  law  partner  of  Major  Stuart,  and  shared  the 
profits  of  the  business;  but  Stuart  was  another  reed  shaking 


250  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

in  the  wind,  being  in  political  life  as  much  as  Lincoln.  In 
this  way  Mr.  Lincoln  gave  this  long  period  of  service  to  his 
friends  and  the  public,  with  meager  compensation  for  any 
of  it,  and  without  any  for  the  greater  part  of  it.  It  was 
well,  however,  and  much  to  his  advantage,  that  he  passed 
through  a  long  period  of  such  work  and  experience.  It 
kept  him  with  and  among  the  people  for  the  whole  time. 
By  reason  of  it  he  came  to  know  every  man  in  the  State 
personally  who  had  an  acquaintance  outside  of  his  county. 
In  the  time  he  had  made  an  intimate  acquaintance  with  all 
the  representatives,  senators.  State  officers,  and  hundreds 
of  other  prominent  men  from  all  parts  of  the  State,  whose 
local  affairs  brought  them  to  the  capital.  Besides  this,  the 
exciting  political  campaigns  took  him  all  over  the  State, 
and  some  places  in  other  "Western  States,  beginning  in  1840, 
as  an  elector  on  the  Whig  ticket  that  year. 

The  canvass  of  1840  gave  him  an  acquaintance  with 
more  than  two  thousand  of  the  public  and  business  men 
of  Illinois,  whom  he  afterwards  knew  personally,  and  most 
of  whom  he  could  address  by  name.  He  made  it  a  habit  to 
remember  his  friends  and  acquaintances,  where  they  lived, 
and  be  ready  with  something  at  hand  that  would  interest 
or  amuse  them  whenever  they  met.  He  had  a  local  acquaint- 
ance in  the  central  part  of  the  State,  rising  as  his  business 
increased  from  two  or  three  counties  in  1836  to  about  ten 
in  1860,  in  which  he  knew  almost  every  person  in  them, 
with  a  remembrance  so  accurate  and  distinct  that  he  knew 
most  of  them  by  name,  their  occupation,  and  where  they 
lived. 

In  the  open-hearted,  cordial  way  that  was  as  natural  to 
him  as  the  easy  fit  and  adaptation  of  his  eight-year-old  silk 
hat,  he  met  these  people  year  in  and  year  out  in  such  sin- 
cere greeting  and  friendship  that  every  one  of  them  was 
afterwards  his  friend,  and  felt  that  they  had  an  interest 
worth  talking  about  in  that  great,  big-hearted  man. 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  251 

With  this  side  of  his  character  well  understood,  as  it 
v\-as  and  should  be  now,  that  he  held  the  people's  conjfidence 
in  almost  a  State  full,  spreading  far  and  wide  as  he  became 
better  known,  can  there  be  any  sort  of  doubt  that  he  was 
the  strongest  man  in  the  aifection  of  the  common  people 
that  ever  lived  on  this  Continent,  or  that,  when  he  came  to 
counsel  with  or  address  them,  they  believed  in  him,  and  that 
their  confidence  could  not  be  shaken?  He  is  to  be  a  strong 
man  in  our  progress,  all  the  way,  but  nowhere  more  than 
the  representative  of  the  plain,  common  people,  who  be- 
lieved in  and  followed  him  stronger  and  more  ardently  the 
more  they  saw  and  heard  him. 

Thus  situated,  it  was  a  tedious  undertaking  for  a  young 
man  to  rise  to  distinction  and  the  enjoyment  of  a  com- 
fortable living,  which  he  reached  in  1843,  at  thirty- three 
years  of  age.  All  the  more  was  it  difficult  as  we  remember 
the  burdens  voluntarily  imposed  upon  himself.  In  addi- 
tion to  this,  "the  bank-failing  money  panic"  that  bank- 
rupted most  of  the  people,  and  generally  obliterated  values 
in  1837,  had,  in  1838,  rolled  over  the  West  with  more 
sweeping  reduction  of  values  than  in  the  Eastern  States, 
if  such  were  possible.  In  the  latter  year  it  ran  like  wild- 
fire, all  the  more  destructive  to  property  because  there  was 
so  little  in  the  newly-settled  States  those  days  to  satisfy 
the  devouring  maw  of  the  money-grinder. 

Everything  went  down  in  money-panic  fashion,  in  a  sort 
of  common  ruin,  where  a  pound  of  money  had  no  counter- 
poise in  property  or  labor  or  its  products.  When  gold  and 
silver,  which  were  all  the  money  that  held  value,  became 
scarce  and  appreciated,  they  were  hoarded,  and  the  busi- 
ness and  industries  and  all  there  was  of  civilization  of  the 
great  West  were  carried  on  for  several  years  by  the  primi- 
tive system  of  barter  and  credits. 

Concerning  this  condition  of  affairs  in  finance  and  trade, 
Mr.  Lincoln  was  wont  to  philosophize:  "If  some  tyro  in 


252  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

money  proposes  a  new  system  of  values,  basing  his  creed 
on  four  simple  articles,  I  believe  we  will  do  well  to  adopt 
it,  at  least  until  disaster  comes.  It  could  be  no  worse  than 
what  is  certain  and  inevitable  under  our  present  system  of 
values,  under  which  there  is  no  reasonable  hope  of  different 
results.  Suppose  we  have:  First,  'Owe  no  man  anything'  (Ko- 
mans  xiii,  8);  second,  'Thou  shalt  not  lend  upon  usury  to 
thy  brother'  (Deuteronomy  xxiii,  19);  third,  a  fixed  value 
for  a  healthy  man's  daily  wage,  or  what  he  can  produce, 
as  a  basis  on  which  to  establish  a  unit  and  standard  of  value ; 
fourth,  the  lands  belong  to  the  people,  as  much  so  under 
God's  laws  as  the  water,  sky,  and  light  and  the  earth,  and 
all  that  is  in  it." 

This  plan  of  fixing  values,  making  exchanges,  and  con- 
ducting business  and  commerce  is  not  Mr.  Lincoln's  exactly 
and  altogether,  but  it  carries  the  sense  and  substance  of 
his  convictions  and  the  foundation  principles  on  which  he 
believed  an  honest  and  harmonious  system  could  be  built 
up  for  the  conduct  of  human  affairs.  It  was  his  wisdom, 
his  statesmanship,  applied,  as  he  believed  it  should  be,  in 
the  control  of  business,  commerce,  values,  and  the  exchanges 
or  dealings  between  men. 

It  came,  not  in  one  evening's  conversation  on  such  sub- 
jects, but  in  hundreds,  through  ten  years,  or  more,  of  his 
mature  and  most  experienced  observations  and  conclusions, 
as  he  talked  and  philosophized  to  a  few  who  were  always 
anxious  for  one  of  his  pleasant  evening  entertainments, 
when  his  generous  and  exalted  reflections  led  him  to  thoughts 
of  what  should  come  in  regular,  advancing  reform  when 
the  cruel  reign  of  slavery  was  overthrown.  !N"immo  Browne 
fully  believed  in  these  principles,  and  often  made  them  the 
subject  of  discussion  with  Mr.  Douglas,  who  agreed  to  their 
feasibility  and  justice  so  far  that  the  time  would  come 
when  they  would  prevail. 

In  the  depression  that  followed  the  wrecking  panic  of 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  253 

1837,  which  lasted  until  the  beginning  of  the  Mexican  War 
in  the  '40's,  lands,  property,  labor,  and  all  its  productions 
went  down  to  ruinous  prices,  often  to  nothing.  Horses 
and  cattle  were  as  low  as  five  to  ten  dollars  a  head,  hogs 
down  to  one  or  two  dollars;  corn — then,  as  now,  the  most 
reliable  staple  production — to  five  cents  a  bushel,  or  less; 
and  potatoes,  cabbage,  and  many  such  productions,  to  fifty 
cents  for  a  farm-wagon  load,  and  wages  down  to  nothing; 
for  many  an  unemployed  man  was  glad  enough  to  do  a 
hard  winter's  work  for  his  board,  and  in  summer  and  fall 
to  earn  enough  to  buy  his  winter  clothing. 

It  was  a  hand-to-mouth  period.  There  were  no  im- 
provements in  progress  of  much  consequence,  and  no  more 
than  a  temporary  demand  for  extra  help  in  harvest.  A 
mechanic  in  the  towns,  or  a  farmer  holding  his  o^ti  and 
making  a  living,  was  doing  well;  but  it  taught  lasting  lessons 
of  careful  and  economical  life.  It  was  a  time  of  home-made 
clothing,  home-made  food,  and  home-built  cabins.  There 
were  many  families  who  did  not  spend  as  much  as  five  dol- 
lars a  vear  in  monev,  who  nevertheless  lived  well  and  were 
prosperous.  Their  principal  expenditures  were  for  cotton- 
yarn  and  tea,  coffee,  and  sugar,  if  they  used  these. 

The  women  spun  the  linen  and  woolen  yarns,  and  wove 
the  fabrics  for  the  household,  and  manufactured  the  wear- 
ing apparel.  The  girls  of  that  day,  in  their  wool  and  linsey 
gowns,  adroitly  plaided  and  colored,  and  with  their  bright 
headgear,  and  the  home-tailored,  bright,  healthy  young  fel- 
lows, in  their  comfortable,  unskimped  suits  of  jeans,  best 
when  it  was  bluest,  felt  as  fashionable  and  as  much  in  society 
as  the  people  of  to-day.  They  met  in  their  cordial,  out- 
spoken way,  and  in  their  winter  gatherings  in  the  cabin 
homes,  where  sprightly,  healthy  boys  and  girls  were  of  more 
concern  than  finer  clothes  and  money,  and  in  the  cabin 
church  and  schoolhonse  combined,  where  there  was  social 
life  with  better  promise  and  more  sincere  friendship,  higher 


254  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

sentiment,  more  hopeful  for  a  growing  nation  than  the  self- 
declared  superiors  who  assemble  in  ease  and  dissemble  in 
all,  whose  raiment,  though  gaudy,  smooth,  soft,  and  silken, 
is  no  better  than  the  old  homespun,  and  at  its  best  is  less 
beautiful  than  "a.  lily  of  the  field." 

It  will  always  be  a  joy  to  every  one  who  remembers  the 
meetings  of  those  sanguine,  whole-souled  young  men  and 
women  who  wore  their  "linsey  woolsey"  and  "sea-blue 
jeans"  with  as  much  freedom,  comfort,  and  ease  as  the 
purple  became  and  graced  the  stately  form  of  Csesar,  to  be 
reminded  that  no  one  ever  enjoyed  the  society  and  merry- 
making more  than  Lincoln.  There  was  consolation  through 
the  grinding  period  of  "the  hard  times"  that,  though  money 
was  scarce,  hard  to  get,  and  seldom  used,  and  what  was 
known  to  be  in  existence,  a  few  had  most  of  it,  and  kept  it 
for  the  reasonable  fear  that  if  they  parted  with  it  they 
would  never  see  it  again,  yet  through  all  this  no  one  went 
hungry,  no  one  went  richly-clad,  but  few  were  needy  of 
clothing  or  food  or  fuel,  or  went  suffering  in  any  way  that 
there  was  not  a  helping  hand  with  something  in  it. 

There  were  no  public  improvements  in  progress  of  mo- 
ment after  1838  until  1850.  There  had  been  an  earnest 
attempt  to  inaugurate  at  least  a  beginning  in  starting  a 
canal  and  some  railroad  enterprises.  Bonds  in  the  sum  of 
nine  million  dollars  had  been  issued  by  the  State  in  aid  of 
the  work,  principally  to  construct  the  canal.  Congress  had 
made  a  land  grant,  one  of  the  first  mistaken  gifts  of  the 
kind,  of  three  hundred  thousand  acres — enough,  it  was  sup- 
posed, to  complete  the  canal,  which  it  no  doubt  would  have 
done  if  it  had  been  honestly  managed;  but  that  appeared 
to  be  the  thing  most  studiously  and  constantly  avoided. 
When  the  work  and  progress  were  looked  over  after 
the  panic,  and  the  collapse  which  came  was  complete, 
a  citizen  said  that  "the  balloon — the  canal  enter- 
prise— collapsed  so  flat  that  you   can  push  it  under  any 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  255 

door  in  the  State-house,  and  return  it  to  the  Legislature, 
may  be  to  the  ver}'  member  who  started  it." 

These  enterprises  failed  and  collapsed,  much  the  same 
as  many  others  at  the  time,  and  a  great  many  more  since. 
Not  that  the  lines  of  transportation  were  not  needed;  for 
they  were  for  the  public  convenience,  that  the  products  so 
depressed  might  find  a  market  and  reach  the  needy  of  the 
cities.  Some  who  should  have  known  did  not  understand 
the  work  of  building  canals  or  railroads.  Some  who  were 
to  issue  the  State  help  as  the  work  progressed  did  so  with- 
out knowing  anything  of  its  progress.  In  short,  the  man- 
agement was  a  failure,  and  the  badly-needed  canal  was  left 
an  unfinished,  unsightly  ditch,  that  flooded  and  damaged, 
rather  than  benefited,  many  farms. 

The  work  of  issuing  the  State  bonds  and  selling  the- 
three  hundred  thousand  acres  of  Government  land  "for  what 
they  would  fetch,"  and  the  measurings  and  the  fictions  in 
figures,  the  ideal  counting  up,  the  line-stretching,  and  the 
selling  of  the  lands  for  less  than  the  Government  price  of 
a  dollar  and  a  quarter  an  acre,  because  they  were  reported 
unsalable,  although  a  family  could  make  a  good  living  off 
of  every  hundred  acres  of  it — all  went  on  industriously  un- 
til the  limit  had  been  reached  and  no  more  bonds  could  be 
issued.  The  land  was  all  squandered,  and  the  plundered 
State  left  without  a  mile  of  completed  railway  and  no  canal. 
The  State  was  almost  bankrupted,  along  with  others  in 
the  same  enterprises,  and  left  without  assets  and  the  enor- 
mous debt  of  that  period,  nine  million  dollars,  at  eight  per 
cent  interest. 

The  State's  credit  sank  until  auditors'  warrants  issued 
for  the  current  expenses  of  the  Government  and  officers' 
salaries  were  often  discounted  at  forty  and  fifty  per  cent. 
It  was  reported  worse  than  that  at  times ;  and  it  was  said  of 
a  governor,  who  was  a  steady  smoker,  that  "he  had  to  pick 
up  all  the  half-smoked  cigar-stumps  he  could  find  in  the 


256  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

halls  of  the  State-house  and  on  the  streets,  as  his  discounted 
salary  of  fifteen  hundred  dollars  a  year  at  the  time  would 
not  permit  the  indulgence  without  this  thrifty  attention  to 
supply." 

The  depression  continued  for  several  years,  and  was 
only  relieved  in  the  excitement  and  change  of  interest  and 
progress  of  the  war  and  the  addition  of  vast  territory  and 
their  great  mineral  resources,  from  which  time  forward  a 
new  era  of  development  awakened  the  Nation,  The  effects 
of  this  disrupting,  destroying  money  system  lasted,  as  all 
of  them  do,  about  ten  years,  and  until,  as  a  plain,  old  man 
said  of  that  one,  "In  them  days,  up  to  and  apast  1842, 
things  got  wus  and  wus,  and  everything  went  down,  down  to 
the  bottom,  until  they  got  better  because  they  could  n't 
get  any  wus." 

It  has  rarely,  if  ever,  happened  that  any  one  of  our 
principal  States  has  ever  been  so  hampered  as  Illinois  was 
in  that  great  break-up,  when  the  onerous  taxes  would  not 
produce  enough  revenue  to  conduct  the  State  Government, 
when  auditors'  warrants  were  flouted  about  the  streets 
and  clipped  in  the  middle  in  the  thrifty,  infant  pawnbroker 
shops  of  the  time.  Taking  the  rule  that  experience  should 
have  taught  lessons  of  wisdom,  we  would  have  expected  a 
"sound  financial  system"  in  the  State  afterwards;  but  in 
the  bank-tumbling,  burned-up  rocket  period,  Illinois  again 
led  the  van  of  bankrupted  States  from  1857-60.  Only  three 
out  of  more  than  sixty  banks  weathered  the  storm,  and  the 
"financiers'  banking  system"  curled  up  in  the  sweep  of  the 
panic  like  the  dry  grass  in  a  prairie  fire,  when  more  than  a 
hundred  millions  went  down  as  another  tremendous  loss 
and  experience-lesson  in  the  Hebrew  system  of  banking, 
money-changing,  credit,  and  commerce. 

During  this  time  Lincoln  was,  like  other  hundreds  of 
struggling  young  men,  doing  his  best  on  a  slender  living 
to  meet  his  burdens  and  expenses  and  lay  the  foundation 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  257 

for  usefulness  and  success  in  his  profession.  He  did  this, 
and  in  doing  so  he  proved  his  high  capability;  for  where  a 
few  like  him — Douglas,  Hardin,  Breese,  and  Shields — did 
succeed,  many  bright  young  men  failed. 

After  the  capital  removal,  Springfield  began  to  grow,  and 
soon  became  a  pleasant  and  desirable  town  of  its  day,  at- 
tracting many  sensible,  enterprising  people,  who  made  it 
what  it  maintained.  In  its  growth  a  number  of  people  who 
could  look  ahead  and  had  the  desire  took  up  its  real  estate 
and  building  enterprises,  in  which  they  made  and  laid  the 
foundations  of  substantial  fortunes.  Among  these  was  a 
good  friend  of  Lincoln's,  who,  while  doing  well  and  making 
money  when  Lincoln  was  doing  the  main  work  that  made 
this  possible,  had  the  rare  good  sense  to  appreciate  the  un- 
tiring work  of  the  young  man,  and  be  a  helpful  friend  when 
he  most  needed  and  fully  deserved  such  a  one. 

William  Butler  was  this  friend,  and  was  never  less  than 
that.  What  their  personal  relations  were,  none  but  them- 
selves knew,  except  that  the  friendship  was  mutual  and 
honorable,  and  that  it  lasted.  \^Tien  Lincoln,  with  Stuart, 
took  the  upper  part  of  one  of  the  first  two-story  business 
buildings  ever  built  on  the  "public  square"  for  an  office, 
he  fitted  up  one  of  the  back  rooms  for  his  sleeping  apart- 
ment, when  he  also  began  taking  his  meals  at  Mr.  Butler's. 
This  arrangement  of  living  he  maintained  for  several  years, 
until  his  marriage,  in  November,  1842. 

He  plodded  along  through  three  years  of  panic  and  dis- 
tress, but  never  real  want  or  famine,  taking  up  no  other 
work  save  that  of  his  profession  and  what  came  of  his  po- 
litical life  and  leadership,  which  came  to  him  without  solici- 
tation. He  continued  a  representative  of  Sangamon  County 
to  1842,  at  least  four  years  longer  than  he  would  have  re- 
tained it  had  it  not  been  for  his  unequaled  fitness  to  ac- 
complish and  complete  the  capital  removal. 

He  gave  his  profession  all  his  attention  possible  in  Ills 
17 


268  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

line  of  work  and  oeciipation,  never  for  any  cause  neglecting 
his  studies  nor  his  careful  habits  and  steady  application 
which  he  maintained.  He  gave  the  law  all  the  time  he 
could,  but  was  kept  out  of  court  often  for  weeks,  and  part 
of  the  time  in  his  public  work,  during  his  eight  years'  serv- 
ice in  the  Legislature.  By  this  we  can  readily  understand 
that  his  professional  fees  for  this  irregular  work  brought 
him  small  returns. 

There  was  one  feature  of  it,  however,  which  always  bene- 
fited him,  and  in  which  he  constantly  kept  the  lead.  He 
was  a  man  full  of  life  and  tireless  energy.  He  had  the 
strength  of  Ajax  and  the  pleading  capabilities  of  Webster, 
Choate,  or  Clay — a  man  of  such  majestic  mien  and  power 
and  convincing  strength  that,  in  a  period  noted  for  brawls, 
turmoils,  and  knockdowns,  his  presence  and  attention  com- 
manded the  peace ;  and  it  was  a  singular  occurrence  indeed 
to  find  a  jury  "that  Lincoln  could  not  take  along  with  him 
just  as  he  liked." 

With  powers  like  these  he  was  called  to  all  the  disturb- 
ances and  encounters  within  his  range  of  getting  to  them, 
some  of  which  were  often  neighborhood  quarrels  rising  into 
riot.  The  law  business  was  usually  in  the  line  of  enforcing 
or  restoring  law  and  order  in  communities  where  strong 
men  were  contending  over  rights  to  land  entries;  the  set- 
tler against  the  land-sharks,  who  infested  every  Government 
land-office,  and  wrung  the  last  cent  out  of  every  helpless 
victim,  as  such  men  have  always  done ;  over  roads  and  rights 
of  way,  and  how  to  work  them,  and  whether  anybody  would; 
over  bridges,  where  and  whether  to  build  them ;  over  school 
districts,  their  boundaries,  how  large,  how  small,  and  where 
to  put  the  house  that  had  to  be  built;  over  towns  and  town 
sites ;  and  who  would  carry  the  load  of  those  that  failed,  and 
those  who  would  not. 

This  was  the  line  of  torts  and  actions  in  law — the  main 
ones  in  the  beginning  of  his  practice,  when,  without  contest 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  259 

or  division  of  opinion  of  any  kind,  Lincoln  was  master  in  the 
settlement  of  all  such  disputes.  Tliis  gave  him  business  and 
standing  with  the  people  for  miles  out  of  Springfield  in 
every  direction,  as  far  as  he  could  conveniently  attend  such 
work,  and  afterwards  throughout  several  counties,  extending 
as  far  east  as  Champaign  and  Vermilion,  and  to  Danville, 
the  county-seat  and  location  of  a  Government  land-office. 

In  Danville  and  Springfield,  where  these  offices  were 
located,  he  had  constant  employment  in  helping  every  settler 
he  could  in  the  struggle  which  he  generally  had  for  his  home- 
stead, to  save  it  and  him  from  the  extortions  and  the  steal- 
ing of  it  by  the  "land-sharks."  Their  schemes  were  so  well 
laid  and  usually  so  persistently  carried  and  held  in  collusion 
with  the  officers  that  in  the  early  days  of  our  Western  set- 
tlement these  "financiers"  laid  their  tribute  on  and  collected 
it  from  almost  every  first  settler  on  our  public  lands.  Lin- 
coln, as  a  lawyer,  soon  became  known  as  the  able  and  stead- 
fast friend  of  the  settler;  and  it  came  to  be  said,  to  his  last- 
ing honor,  that  "he  took  every  settler's  case  he  could  attend 
to,  and  his  work  was  alwavs  the  best  that  could  be  done. 
He  never  took  a  case  against  one,  and  he  scared  the  land- 
sharks  more  than  all  the  rest  of  the  lawyers  in  the  State." 

Many  a  settler  and  many  a  family  saved  their  homestead 
through  the  determined  will  and  work  of  this  powerful  man. 
His  terrible  invectives  and  ridicule  became  excruciating  tor- 
ture as  he  laid  open  their  schemes  to  defraud  and  dispossess 
the  toiling,  honest  settlers  of  their  home.  "I  respect," 
said  he,  "the  man  who  properly  named  these  villains  land- 
sharks.  They  are  like  the  wretched  ghouls  of  the  sea  that 
follow  a  ship  and  fatten  on  its  offal." 

In  those  days  a  settler  could  file  a  claim,  pre-empt  the 
land  as  his  first  entry,  and  in  a  term  of  twelve  to  fifteen 
months,  under  various  acts  of  Congress,  complete  it.  When 
the  settler's  claim  was  filed,  the  "land-shark"  would  file  his 
counter  claim,  as  there  was  no  limit  to  the  filing,  whether 


260  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

he  wanted  the  land  or  not.  When  the  first  entry  was  to 
be  completed,  he  would,  if  possible,  compel  every  settler 
to  pay  him  a  fee  of  ten  to  a  hundred  dollars,  as  he  measured 
the  poor  settler's  ability  to  pay,  or  bid  the  land  up  to  a 
higher  price  against  him;  for  in  all  cases,  so  contested,  the 
land  was  sold  to  the  highest  bidder.  Lincoln  did  much  to 
break  up  such  work,  for  which  the  people  thanked  and  hon- 
ored him. 

One  case  in  this  work  will  show  his  interest  and  illustrate 
it  as  well  as  a  hundred.  It  was  the  custom  of  leading  lawyers 
to  travel  over  the  circuits  of  several  counties  with  the  judge. 
Before  the  days  of  railroads,  their  ordinary  way  of  traveling 
was  on  horseback,  and  usually  each  one  owned  his  horse. 
The  court,  bar,  and  some  friends,  on  one  of  these  journeys, 
were  on  their  way,  one  morning  in  April,  coming  from  the 
west,  some  ten  miles  out  of  Springfield.  There  were  several 
of  them,  all  mounted.  Mr.  Lincoln  had  a  strong,  fine  animal. 
He  needed  such  a  one  to  carry  him  well,  and  he  "dearly  loved 
a  fine  horse."  The  mud  was  deep  and  miry,  so  the  company 
was  making  slow  progress.  The  noise  of  a  plunging  horse 
in  the  mud  and  an  excited  man  drew  their  attention.  On 
seeing  him,  Mr.  Lincoln  grasped  the  whole  situation  in  a 
moment.  He  dismounted,  and,  nearing  the  road,  stood 
ready  to  meet  the  man  on  the  tired  horse,  tugging  along  at 
his  best,  but  another  man  on  a  more  sprightly  animal 
could  be  seen  approaching.  As  the  first  rider  came  abreast, 
Lincoln  hurriedly  inquired,  "John,  is  this  the  day  of  your 
final  entry,  and  have  you  the  money?"  John  was  tired  out 
with  his  twent3'-mile  race,  covered  Avith  mud,  haggard  and 
worn,  discouraged  almost  to  the  point  of  despair,  and  about 
hopeless,  notwithstanding  his  heroic  struggle  to  save  his 
homestead,  by  the  fatigued  and  broken-down  condition  of 
his  horse;  for  unless  he  could  reach  the  land-office  by  noon 
and  make  final  payment,  his  claim  and  his  family's  home 
would  be  open  for  filing  and  entry  again,  of  which  default 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  261 

his  pursuing  neighbor  was  sure  to  take  advantage.  He  was 
delayed  in  getting  the  last  of  the  little  sum  so  much  needed, 
and  now  with  ten  miles  of  muddy  roads  ahead  he  had  less 
than  two  hours  to  reach  Springfield.  Looking  into  Lincoln's 
great,  honest  face,  he  replied,  ''Yes,  I  've  got  the  money ; 
but  my  horse  cant  make  it.''  "Mine  can,"  said  Lincoln; 
"take  him  and  save  your  land.  Take  the  right-hand  road 
a  mile  ahead  of  this,  and  get  on  the  south  road  into  town; 
by  this  you  will  save  a  mile.  Take  care  of  the  horse  as  well 
as  you  can,  but  be  sure  to  get  there  in  time  to  save  your 
land." 

Such  incidents  need  no  further  explanation.  This  was  a 
party  of  fairly  representative  men,  mainly  lawyers.  The 
struggling  settler's  condition  was  not  unusual;  such  things 
were  happening  all  over  the  West,  and  they  became  used 
to  them  as  men  become  used  to  other  forms  of  distress  and 
suffering  about  them.  Xot  one  of  them  would  have  helped 
the  man,  save  Lincoln,  who  knew  the  man  better  and  ap- 
preciated the  momentary  opportunity.  His  better  knowl- 
edge instantly  discovered  the  settler's  last  chance  and  neces- 
sity, and  he  did  then  what  he  kept  doing  all  his  lifetime — 
lifted  and  lightened  the  burden  of  every  heavy-laden  soul 
that  came  his  way. 

He  persevered,  kept  up  his  law  business  and  political 
work,  which  as  he  progressed  were  inseparable.  Through 
all  those  grinding  years  of  depression,  he  was  the  soul  and 
spirit  of  every  gathering  he  was  in.  The  lawyer  ready  for 
the  most  orderly-conducted  suit,  or  the  "most  rough-and- 
tumble  fuss,"  men  or  rowdies  were  inclined  to  make  it, 
holding  the  strength,  will,  and  good  sense  to  have  it  said, 
"Lincoln  always  leads  in  the  wind-up."  It  should  always 
be  borne  in  mind  that  his  successes  and  achievements  were 
never  in  the  slightest  degree  "happen  so's,"  or  accidental. 
He  had  the  wisdom  the  Master  gave  him  as  leader,  and  the 
strength  of  a  lion,  high  capacity,  and  fitness  so  rarely  given 


262  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

in  God's  economy,  that  it  was  genius,  the  all-around  powers, 
light,  and  equipments,  that  made  him  one  of  the  wisest  and 
best  of  all  the  world's  heroes  or  statesmen. 

That  he  used  these  tremendous  powers  discreetly,  cau- 
tiously, and  moderately  when  such  exercise  of  them  would 
accomplish  his  well-devised  plans,  was  neither  indication 
nor  proof  that  he  did  not  know  how  and  when  to  use  them 
in  all  their  strength.  This  was  established  beyond  contro- 
versy afterwards  in  the  use  of  his  own  and  the  half-divided 
Nation's  mighty  forces  with  such  bewildering  strength,  con- 
founding movements,  patient,  duty-crushing  operations  and 
consequences,  that  the  transforming  scene  was  splendid  and 
majestic,  beyond  ideals,  or  the  work  of  quarreling  statesmen 
and  ambitious  warrior  leaders,  when  over  four  millions 
fought  so  furiously  under  his  hand  and  lead,  for  and  against 
him,  all  wielded  in  his  eventual  control,  in  such  destruction, 
to  such  fiery  cremation  of  the  evil  cause,  that  the  Nation  is 
rebuilded  stronger,  more  American  because  of  it. 

In  the  evolutionary  process  of  making  farms  and  rich- 
producing  fields  out  of  prairies,  forests,  swamps,  and  the 
almost  endless  rolling  plains  away  to  the  westward,  building 
homes,  schoolhouses  and  churches,  villages,  towns  and  cities, 
bridges,  railroads  and  water-lines,  improvements  that 
brought  every  home  in  the  State  within  five  to  ten  miles  of 
steam  or  water  transportation,  as  educational,  scientific,  and 
religious  systems  filled  every  county,  and  as  the  people  grew 
and  prospered  in  wisdom  and  strength  and  waxed  strong 
and  great,  Lincoln's  law  business  and  public  service,  which 
were  always  inseparable,  kept  pace,  and  as  the  great  State 
and  its  surrounding  ones  of  the  Upper  Mississippi  Valley, 
unequaled  in  land  and  resources,  rose  in  power  and  impor- 
tance, his  work,  increasing  knowledge,  stronger  moorings, 
and  better  fixed  relations  kept  steadily  along  with  them. 
His  friends,  teachers,  comrades,  associates,  and  fellow- 
workers,  as  they  and  he  progressed,,   studied,  and  worked 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  263 

out  their  several  callings  and  duties  in  increasing  numbers, 
became  helpers,  and  the  younger  among  us  came  to  know 
him  as  a  teacher,  a  man  of  morals,  learning,  and  strong, 
positive  character.  As  he  grew  in  strength  and  capability, 
he  also  grew  in  the  respect  and  confidence  of  all  near  and 
about  him,  among  whom  were  the  most  sincere,  courageous, 
and  persevering  men  of  the  State. 

His  office  and  himself  became  known  and  celebrated  for 
the  high  character  and  standing  of  himself  and  his  asso- 
ciates, and  the  men  of  business  and  social  affairs  among 
whom  he  lived,  who  were  the  equals  of  those  in  any  western 
community,  or  of  the  Nation  as  well.  He  grew  up  in  law 
and  public  occupation,  among  a  people  as  well  educated  and 
equipped  for  life  and  its  duties  as  any  of  his  period  or  time. 

As  the  law  rose  from  the  care  of  the  narrower  limits  and 
disputes  of  a  new  and  rapidly-settling  country  to  that  of 
interests  and  undertakings  where  thousands  of  people  were 
added,  and  millions  in  value,  annually,  when  in  number- 
less ways  more  intricate,  specific,  and  technical  knowledge 
and  qualifications  were  necessities,  he  rose,  too,  in  steady  and 
equal  progression  to  such  distinction  and  merit  that  no  one 
ever  thought  of  finding  a  more  reputable  institution  than  his 
law  office  or  a  better-managed  lawsuit,  or  wiser  counsel 
given,  than  where  he  had  done  the  work,  taken  the  cause 
through  the  courts,  or  had  been  the  counselor. 


f 


V^  Kir  a  3.^ 


CHAPTER  XII. 

IINCOLISr  and  Douglas  grew  up  together,  similarly  situ- 
ated and  surrounded  in  many  ways.  Douglas  was  one 
of  the  best-informed,  well-studied-up,  learned,  and 
fearless  contestants  in  law  or  politics,  in  or  out  of  Congress. 
At  no  time  did  he  or  his  friends  consider  Lincoln  his  in- 
ferior, but  an  equal  in  courts  and  public  life,  as  the  work 
in  their  current  lives  demonstrated  beyond  doubt.  Some 
writers  in  contrasting  the  men  have  held  Lincoln  much 
superior  in  honor  and  morality,  and  in  doing  so  have  dis- 
credited Douglas. 

The  truth  is,  that  Lincoln's  political  integrity  was  sin- 
cere, firm,  and  candid.  Douglas  was  a  man  of  expediency 
and  like  most  politicians,  since  Jacob  negotiated  with  Laban, 
who  have  served  their  interests  and  made  the  best  bargain 
they  could. 

Douglas  contended  with  men  who  believed  that  intrigue, 
if  successfully  covered  up,  was  wise  and  fairly  honorable 
statesmanship.  He  accepted  and  submitted  to  beliefs  to 
unite  and  harmonize  the  conflicting  elements  in  his  party 
as  measures  of  justifiable  policy,  in  the  same  way  that  most 
party  leaders  of  the  time  did.  Whig  and  Democrat  alike. 
Clay,  the  venerated  Whig  leader,  in  whom  Mr.  Lincoln  be- 
lieved above  all  other  men,  held  to  this  line  of  political  life 
or  honor  constantly.  He  was  a  compromiser  in  that  day, 
as  he  had  been  for  his  lifetime,  assuring  slavery  and  anti- 
slavery  people  that  he  held  partial  beliefs  with  both  sides. 
Benton  was  opposed  to  slavery  extension,  but  sustained 
it  in  his  State,  and  was  a  slaveholder. 

264 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  265 

Jackson  was  a  pro-slavery  man,  but  firm  against  disunion, 
and  would  have  sacrificed  slavery  to  prevent  it.  Douglas 
was  against  intervention  on  the  slavery  question,  holding 
that  slavery  should  be  let  alone  as  a  domestic  institution. 
Webster  was  against  slavery,  as  he  said,  but  agreed  to  the 
slavery-remanding  laws,  and  denounced  agitators  of  the 
question  more  severely  than  any  man  in  his  State.  Van 
Buren,  Harrison,  Cass,  Scott,  Buchanan,  and  thousands  of 
others  would  accept  and  defend  Avhatever  declaration  their 
parties  patched  out  and  promulgated  as  readily  as  poli- 
ticians accept  new  policies  and  definitions  of  political  prin- 
ciples to-day. 

Above  all  of  them,  two  coming  principal  leaders  sin- 
cerely declared  their  beliefs  unequivocally  and  without  pre- 
varication— Jefferson  Davis  for  and  Abraham  Lincoln 
against  slavery.  There  were  many  others,  some  of  whom 
became  able  and  noted  leaders;  but  these  two  declared  the 
issue,  and  fought  it  out.  In  1840,  Lincoln  and  Douglas 
canvassed  the  State  of  Illinois  as  chief  speakers  and  leaders 
of  their  respective  parties,  continuing  as  such  for  almost 
twenty  years  afterwards,  with  increasing  influence  and 
strength,  until  one  was  the  leader  of  the  party  he  did  so 
much  to  create,  and  became  President;  and  the  other,  dis- 
credited and  beaten  by  the  minority  of  the  party  he  had 
served  better  than  Eichelieu  or  Wolsey  did  their  coarse- 
minded,  brutal  kings,  was  never  wrenched  or  moved  one 
moment  from  the  leadership  of  the  loyal  Democracy  of  the 
Nation. 

Lincoln  became  one  of  the  State  electors,  or  the  candi- 
date for  that  office.  He  had  to  canvass  the  State,  which 
he  did  successfully,  meeting  Douglas  frequently,  and  hold- 
ing joint  discussions  with  him  in  several  towns  where  they 
happened  to  meet.  This  was  then  a  custom,  and  a  very 
sensible  one,  where  every  political  meeting  was  made  a 
joint  one,  when  competent  speakers  of  both  parties  were 


266  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

present.  Lincoln  was  made  candidate  for  elector  that  year, 
and  in  every  Presidential  election  afterwards  to  1856,  be- 
cause of  his  incomparable  ability  as  a  speaker  and  reasoner, 
and  perhaps  because  of  his  inexhaustible  humor,  which 
brought  thousands  of  people  together  wherever  he  spoke 
to  hear  the  apt  and  well-told  stories  that  would  convulse 
a  multitude. 

The  emoluments  of  the  position  are  wholly  contingent. 
In  this  work  they  were  nothing,  for  he  was  always  good- 
natured  and  generous  enough  to  deal  out  the  post-offices 
and  other  contingents,  such  as  judgeships,  attorneyships, 
receivers  and  agents  of  the  land-offices,  commissionerships, 
and  the  lesser  places  about  the  public  buildings  and  offices, 
in  the  fairest  way  he  knew,  with  no  place  reserved  for 
himself. 

In  1840,  Douglas  was  Secretary  of  State  of  Illinois,  but 
canvassed  the  State,  from  which  time  forward  his  leader- 
ship in  the  Democratic  party  was  established.  The  Presi- 
dential contest  turned  on  the  smaller  and  personal  differ- 
ences of  the  time.  Van  Buren,  who  was  renominated,  was 
soundly  berated,  and  perhaps  more  or  less  unfairly  abused, 
for  his  extravagance  and  derelictions  of  duty.  '"Dick  John- 
son," who  was  on  the  same  ticket  for  Vice-President,  had 
seen  some  Indian  campaigning,  and  it  was  claimed  that  he 
had  killed  Tecumseh,  the  noted  chieftain,  which  was  stoutly 
denied  by  the  Whigs.  Harrison,  the  Whig  candidate,  who 
was  elected,  with  Tyler  as  Vice-President,  was  nominated 
mainly  because  of  his  military  and  frontier  service.  He 
had  been  the  friend  of  the  settlers  in  all  their  encounters 
with  the  Indians.  He  had  fought  for  them  and  with  them 
in  a  long  service,  and  became  popular  as  "the  log-cabin  can- 
didate." The  campaign  was  more  notable  to  Lincoln  and 
Douglas  for  the  free  and  vigorous  manner  of  conducting  it 
than  any  issue  involved  in  it.  They  came  out  of  it  un- 
questioned and  unrivaled  leaders  of  their  parties.    The  rela- 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  267 

tions  of  the  States  and  the  slavery  question  were  avoided 
and  not  discussed,  as  party  beliefs  were  about  the  same  on 
those  subjects.  The  most  absorbing  questions  were,  who 
and  what  office  this  or  that  political  leader  or  helper  should 
have,  and  a  delicate  discrimination  was  necessary  whenever 
offices  were  at  the  party's  or  any  leader's  disposal. 

The  policy  of  Jackson,  brief  and  plain,  as  explained  by 
Marcy,  of  New  York,  "that  in  politics  as  in  war,  it  is  always 
fair  that  to  the  victors  belong  the  spoils,"  was  always  held 
to  be  a  demoralizing  system  for  the  distribution  of  patronage 
by  the  ones  who  had  no  part  in  the  division,  but  the  amelior- 
ation of  opinion  and  the  "sudden  change  of  heart"  on  the 
subject  when  they  got  offices  to  receive  and  distribute,  was 
amazing,  surpassing  ordinary  belief. 

The  AYhigs  gained  a  decisive  victory,  which  was  perhaps 
a  more  emphatic  expression  in  favor  of  better  and  higher 
standards  in  the  administration  of  public  offices  and  public 
aifairs  than  any  expression  of  party  belief.  The  Demo- 
cratic party  had  been  in  office  for  three  terms,  and,  as  with 
all  parties  which  retain  unbroken  power  for  any  long  period, 
public  affairs  were  running  at  loose  ends.  Accusations  flew 
thick  and  fast  as  to  the  honesty  and  integrity  of  some  of 
Van  Buren's  appointees.  He  and  his  Cabinet  treated  these 
as  frivolous  charges.  They  paid  little  attention  to  meas- 
ures that  promised  relief  to  the  people.  The  distress  and 
depression  of  every  value  had  continued  for  three  years, 
and,  almost  exasperated  by  the  lack  of  interest  of  the  Van 
Buren  Administration  in  their  welfare,  the  people  demanded 
a  change,  and  got  it.  It  was,  however,  almost  a  barren  vic- 
tory, for  Harrison,  who  was  infirm  and  in  feeble  health, 
lived  only  one  month  after  his  inauguration,  when  he  was 
succeeded  by  John  Tyler,  of  Virginia,  who  had  been  elected 
with  him.  He  soon  faltered,  dissembled  a  short  period, 
apostatized  to  the  Southern  propaganda,  which  demanded 
more  slave  territory,  and  the  Democratic  party. 


268  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

In  the  time  of  the  depression,  about  September,  1842, 
when  State  warrants  were  at  their  lowest,  an  unfortunate 
affair  occurred  between  Lincoln  and  the  State  auditor,  who, 
though  in  no  way  more  responsible  for  den}dng  payment 
than  thousands  of  others,  yet  being  auditor  could  not  avoid 
much  of  the  ridicule  put  upon  him  by  the  Whig  news- 
papers. One  of  the  leading  papers  was  the  Springfield 
Journal,  which  published  without  reserve  all  sorts  of  ridic- 
ulous assaults  on  Shields,  the  auditor,  an  irascible,  high- 
tempered,  but  popular  young  Irishman.  Shields,  through 
his  next  friend.  General  Whiteside,  demanded  retraction 
of  what  he  and  his  friends  considered  slanderous  attacks 
upon  him,  or  the  name  of  the  responsible  author,  from  the 
publisher.  Mr.  Lincoln  had  written  one  of  the  objection- 
able attacks,  but  in  it  he  intended  no  personal  criticism  of 
the  auditor  except  as  one  of  the  party  responsible  for  the 
depreciation  of  warrants.  Others,  young  ladies  of  Lincoln's 
acquaintance,  had  contributed  more  ridiculous  stories.  The 
publisher,  not  wanting  to  stand  responsible  to  the  angered 
auditor  or  the  Indian  war  brigadier,  in  his  dilemma  appealed 
to  Lincoln,  who,  he  was  sure,  would  have  no  lack  of  courage, 
whatever  might  be  its  termination. 

The  publisher  Avas  a  ]\Ir.  Francis,  a  fairly  able  writer  of 
his  day,  who,  after  publishing  the  communications  of  the 
ladies,  should  have  had  the  gallantry  to  defend  them.  How- 
ever, he  shifted  his  responsibility,  for  what  reason  there  was 
no  explanation.  Lincoln  took  it  up  in  the  same  good- 
natured,  criticising  way  that  he  conducted  the  matter  from 
the  beginning.  However,  nothing  could  appease  WTiiteside 
and  the  fiery  little  son  of  Erin  but  "an  affair  of  honor," 
which  Mr.  Lincoln  proceeded  to  plan  out  to  a  more  ridicu- 
lous ending,  if  that  were  possible,  than  its  ludicrous  be- 
ginning. Lincoln  accepted  the  combat,  thus  giving  him 
choice  of  weapons  and  distances.    The  small  party  of  prin- 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  2G9 

cipals,  friends,  and  surgeons  proceeded  to  the  field  in  Mis- 
souri, opposite  Alton,  Illinois.  The  Lincoln  party  announced 
that  the  "affair"  would  be  settled  with  broadswords  of  the 
largest  side,  the  combatants  being  restricted  to  a  space  six 
feet  square  for  each,  with  a  railing  between  them. 

Shields'  friend,  Whiteside,  loudly  denounced  the  weap- 
ons and  the  distance  as  barbarous  in  the  extreme,  and  an 
unheard-of  discrimination  against  his  small,  shorter-limbed 
principal.  Mr.  Lincoln's  friend.  Dr.  Merryman,  as  jolly, 
good-hearted  a  man  as  his  name  indicates,  replied:  "That 
is  my  principal's  belief,  that  is  at  least  as  to  the  barbarous 
part  of  it.  He  had  little  responsibility  and  no  inclination 
to  make  it  more  serious  than  may  be  avoided;  still  without 
fear,  if  your  principal  is  determined  to  carry  it  to  bloody 
conclusions,  he  has  only  exercised  his  privileges  under 
the  code  in  choosing  weapons  and  limiting  distances,  so 
that  if  the  barbarous  work  is  to  proceed,  the  chopping  up 
will  be  as  thoroughly  and  skillfully  done  as  possible." 

Neither  Shields  nor  Whiteside  would  agree  to  the  use  of 
broadswords,  and  thus  the  famous  affair  ended,  as  Lincoln 
planned  it  should  end  when  the  excited  Irishman  and  his 
more  unreasonable  friend  demanded  a  combat.  Whiteside 
kept  up  the  quarrel  after  the  return  from  Alton  with  Lin- 
coln's friend,  Mr.  Butler,  whom  he  challenged.  Butler  ac- 
cepted it,  and  was  ready  to  fight,  choosing  rifles  at  only 
fifteen  paces.  This,  too,  like  the  other,  was  too  barbarous 
for  Whiteside,  and  so  that  affair  ended.  Mr.  Lincoln  was 
drawn  into  this  much-talked-of  affair  more  to  protect  his 
friends,  the  ambitious  young  lady  correspondents,  than  for 
any  other  purpose.  He  made  the  best  of  it,  and  prepared  the 
way  to  laugh  it  off,  as  he  intended  from  the  beginning. 
After  it  was  over  he  said:  "I  did  not  have  anything  like 
enmity  toward  Shields,  and  did  not  intend  that  any  hann 
should  come  to  either  of  us.    I  knew  that,  with  a  long  broad- 


270  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

sword,  I  could  have  poked  off  a  little  man  like  Shields  for 
a  day  or  two."  He  was  sensible  enough  never  to  refer  to 
it  except  as  a  "boyish  freak." 

They  became  friends,  and  understood  each  other  better 
afterwards.  Shields,  although  he  was  a  quick-tempered  man 
and  rashly  jumped  into  many  difficulties,  was  nevertheless 
one  of  real  merit,  and  won  in  his  adopted  country's  service 
more  real  distinction  than  have  all  his  detractors  if  lumped 
together.  He  was  made  a  brigadier-general  in  the  war  with 
Mexico.  In  heroically  leading  his  command  at  Cerro  Gordo 
he  was  shot  through  his  right  lung,  and  survived,  which 
was  a  notable  circumstance,  showing  strong  vitality  and 
active  recuperative  powers. 

On  his  return  he  was  elected  a  senator  from  Illinois; 
after  this  he  removed  to  Minnesota,  where  he  was  elected 
and  served  another  term  in  the  Senate  from  that  State. 
When  the  war  for  the  Union  began.  President  Lincoln  ap- 
pointed him  a  brigadier-general.  He  was  then  a  man  past 
mature  age,  and  although  not  able  for  field  service  he  will- 
ingly undertook  it,  and  served  until  the  close  of  the  war, 
thus  rendering  for  the  second  time  worthy  and  courageous 
service  for  his  adopted  country.  In  this  he  earned  the  un- 
rivaled distinction  of  defeating  "Stonewall"  Jackson,  who 
was  perhaps  one  of  the  most  determined  fighters  of  the  Con- 
federacy. 

After  this,  when  quite  old,  about  the  seventies,  when 
living  in  Missouri,  he  was  elected  and  served  another  short 
term  in  the  Senate  from  that  State,  doing  what  no  other 
man  so  far  has  done — becoming  a  member  of  the  United 
States  Senate  from  three  States.  He  was  a  loyal  man,  who 
truly  loved  our  country,  and  appreciated  its  many  bless- 
ings. He  led  thousands  of  Irishmen  to  serve  under  the 
flag  of  the  Union.  He  had  faults  and  foibles,  and  as  there 
are  few  who  do  not  have  them,  he  will  be  remembered  as  a 
courageous  and  patriotic  Irish-American,  who  served  his 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  271 

country  and  fought  for  it  in  two  wars,  in  which  his  wounds 
were  honorable.  He  did  this  while  his  small-minded,  short- 
sighted detractors  were  fighting  him  at  long  range,  with 
nothing  more  daring  than  ink  and  rusty  pens. 

Keither  Lincoln  nor  Shields  ever  referred  to  the  differ- 
ence after  the  return  from  Alton.  His  appointment  by  Mr. 
Lincoln  was  surely  a  sufficient  forgetting,  if  any  further 
one  had  ever  been  needed.  Lincoln  never  was  a  disputer  to 
blows  if  he  could  avoid  it,  and  through  his  life  pacified 
every  one  in  every  quarrel  he  could,  where  quarrels  were 
common  and  frequent  all  about  him  in  his  early  days. 

In  mature  age  and  wisdom,  on  the  subject  of  peaceful 
settlements  of  disputes  and  contentions,  in  administering 
reproof  in  the  spirit  of  the  Master,  he  once  wrote  out  and 
delivered  as  an  admonition  to  a  young  man  who  had  been 
arraigned  at  the  bar  of  a  court  for  a  quarrelsome  habit,  and 
a  certain  dispute,  that  brought  this  punishment,  the  repri- 
mand by  Mr.  Lincoln  of  the  peacemaker's  duty  and  the 
disputer's  need  of  submission,  in  terms  that  should  be  re- 
membered as  long  as  men  honor  and  respect  the  name  of 
Lincoln.    It  is  as  follows: 

"The  advice  of  a  father  to  his  son, 

'Beware 
Of  entrance  to  a  quarrel ;  but  being  in, 
Bear  it  that  the  opposer  may  beware  of  thee,' 

is  good,  but  not  the  best.  Quarrel  not  at  all.  No  man  re- 
solved to  make  the  most  of  himself  can  spare  the  time  for 
personal  contention;  still  less  can  he  afford  to  take  all  the 
consequences,  including  the  vitiating  of  his  temper  and  the 
loss  of  self-control.  Yield  larger  things  to  which  you  can 
show  no  more  than  equal  right,  and  yield  lesser  ones  though 
clearly  your  own.  Better  give  your  pathway  to  a  dog  than 
be  bitten  by  him  in  contesting  for  the  right.  Even  killing 
the  dog  would  not  cure  the  bite." 


272  ABB  AH  AM  LINCOLN. 

Major  Stuart  was  elected  to  Congress  in  1840,  in  the 
victorious  "Log-cabin  and  Hard-cider"  campaign.  This 
took  him  out  of  the  law  so  completely  that  the  partnership 
necessarily  came  to  a  close.  Lincoln  was  alone  in  his  work 
until  early  in  1841,  when  he  formed  a  partnership  with 
Judge  Stephen  T.  Logan,  one  of  his  preceptors,  who  more 
than  an}^  other  man  started  him  in  the  profession.  Logan 
was  one  of  the  strongest,  closest  read,  and  most  indefati- 
gable lawyers,  either  as  counsel  or  pleader,  of  the  Spring- 
field bar,  or  in  the  States.  He  was,  too,  a  man  of  sterling 
integrity,  who  lived  a  strictly  moral  life,  whose  character  and 
reputation  were  all  that  upright  living  and  close  attention 
to  his  work  could  make  it. 

Lincoln  was  growing  very  fast  when  he  made  this  busi- 
ness connection.  He  had  made  a  fine  canvass  and  left  a 
striking  impression  of  his  talents  all  over  the  State  in  his 
stump  oratory  and  addresses.  He  had  a  plain,  common  way 
of  talking  to  the  people  that  attracted  thousands  wherever 
he  went.  His  fame  as  an  orator  spread  all  over  the  country, 
and  the  calls  on  him  for  speeches  afterwards  were  always 
more  than  he  could  fill.  At  this  time  there  was  more  busi- 
ness in  Logan's  office  than  he  could  in  any  way  give  his 
personal  attention  to.  The  thought  was,  in  making  the 
partnership,  that  Lincoln  could  take  all  the  jury  cases,  make 
the  oral  pleadings,  and  do  the  principal  part  of  the  talking, 
but  Logan  would  take  care  of  the  petitioning,  carefully- 
written  pleadings,  and  the  record  work,  with  well-noted 
briefs  in  every  case.  In  short,  Logan  would  conduct  the  par- 
ticular and  intricate  part  of  the  work  requiring  knowledge, 
and  Mr.  Lincoln  v\^ould  do  most  if  not  all  the  talking,  and 
maintain  his  pre-eminence  as  an  orator,  doing  which  they 
would  increase  the  name  and  standing  of  the  old-established 
Logan  law  office,  with  Lincoln  as  an  incidental  help. 

However,  Lincoln  soon  took  his  own  status  in  the  law 
courts,  as  he  had  done  in  the  forum.    He  was  well  founded 


TEE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  273 

in  the  principles  of  right  and  justice,  and  his  capacious 
mind  had  stored  the  traditions,  precedents,  and  principles 
of  the  science  so  well,  that  as  soon  as  he  became  familiar 
with  the  forms  and  course  of  pleadings,  he  could  not  only- 
take  care  of  these  and  the  arguments  in  a  suit,  but  in  a  few 
months  he  could  and  did  take  care  of  all  the  work  in  them, 
however  intricate  they  were,  as  well  as  Logan. 

William  May;  Senator  Edward  D.  Baker,  killed  at  Ball's 
Bluff  in  1862;  Milton  Hay,  John  Palmer,  Shelby  Cullom, 
were  all  of  them  associates,  students,  or  partners  of  Logan. 
This  office,  besides  being  one  of  the  strongest  institutions 
in  law  practice  and  business,  finally  became  one  of  the  best 
law  schools  in  the  profession  as  well,  where  hundreds  of 
young  men  got  the  knowledge  and  training  that  prepared 
them  for  the  profession.  Logan  not  only  recognized  Lin- 
coln's genius  and  leadership  of  men,  but  believed,  as  he  often 
said,  that  "of  all  the  men  with  whom  I  have  been  associated, 
he  is  the  most  careful,  untiring  lawyer  in  the  study  and  man- 
agement of  his  cases  I  have  ever  met,"  and  again,  "He  would 
study  out  his  case  and  make  about  as  much  out  of  it  as 
anybody,  and  his  ambition  as  a  lawyer  increased  and  he 
grew  constantly.  By  close  study  of  each  case  as  it  came  up 
he  got  to  be  quite  a  formidable  lawyer." 

In  these  closely-related  facts  we  have  indisputable  proof 
of  the  wonderful  power  and  resources  of  Lincoln.  Within  a 
few  years,  entering  these  law  offices  with  meager  oppor- 
tunities, but  not  without  intense  study  and  the  most  deter- 
mined application,  with  no  means  except  what  he  earned, 
with  no  friends  except  those  which  he  drew  towards  him, 
with  no  powerful  influence  or  moneyed  interests  in  his  favor, 
at  thirty-two  years  of  age  he  became  the  associate,  on  equal 
conditions,  of  the  ablest  and  most  prosperous  lawyer  in  the 
State. 

If  he  had  done  no  more  than  to  be  the  accepted  equal  of 
Judge  Logan,  it  would  have  been  phenomenal,  and  a  triumph 
18 


274  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

which  few  men  accomplish.  This  was  all  that  Logan  did, 
learned,  able,  experienced,  and  justly  reputed  as  he  was  and 
deserved  to  be.  But  of  Lincoln  it  is  perhaps  the  time  when 
he  came  to  his  matured  manhood  and  the  opening  of  his 
wonderful  career.  When  he  began  to  have  impressions,  or 
more  truly  inspirations,  of  a  great  and  pressing  duty  before 
him,  when  to  all  outward  appearances  he  had  reached  final 
success  after  years  of  toil  and  privation,  even  then  he  was 
often  plunged  into  periods  of  the  deepest  melancholy  without 
his  control  or  volition. 

The  association  with  Logan  was  of  great  and  lasting  ad- 
vantage to  Lincoln  in  many  ways.  It  gave  help  and  a 
stronger  basis  for  his  already  well-formed  moral  character, 
about  which  so  many  able  and  well-learned  in  the  profession 
about  him  were  careless  and  indifferent,  and  some  even  much 
worse. 

Logan  was  conducting  a  well-regulated,  systematized, 
and  profitable  business,  which  Lincoln  shared  at  once.  Now 
for  the  first  time  in  his  professional  life  he  was  in  a  situ- 
ation to  expect  and  receive  fair  remuneration  for  his  services. 
As  many  a  struggling  politician  has  learned  to  his  loss,  and 
as  we  have  related  of  Lincoln,  up  to  this  time  much  of  his 
work  was  done  for  those  who  were  in  politics  with  him,  and 
who  never  paid  for  political  service. 

In  the  Logan  partnership  this  was  all  changed.  Business 
going  through  his  office  had  always  brought  reasonable 
remuneration,  and  in  the  partnership  it  was  not  to  be  and 
was  not  changed.  It  would  be  hard  to  see  how  Lincoln  could 
have  ever  got  out  of  his  unpaid-for  work  and  way  of  con- 
tinuing it  without  the  aid  of  a  strong  man  like  Logan. 

Most  of  this  relation  is  from  personal  remembrance  of 
Lincoln's  talks  on  business  later  in  life,  once  particularly 
when  he  remarked:  "I  never  felt  my  independence  or  the 
real  good  of  it,  until  a  few  months  after  my  association  with 
Judge  Logan,  when  our  fees  came  in  as  regularly  as  the  busi- 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  275 

ness  progressed.  He  was  a  sound-headed  man,  under  whose 
management  everything  was  done  with  regularity  and  dis- 
patch. In  my  careless  way  of  getting  into  business  I  needed 
such  help,  and  could  not  have  succeeded  in  my  situation 
without  it.  His  methods  and  training  were  of  incalculable 
and  lasting  benefit  to  me,  and  I  can  not  too  strongly  impress 
the  necessity  of  such  habits  on  young  men.'' 

It  behooved  Lincoln,  as  it  would  have  done  any  other 
man,  to  get  down  to  the  hardest  and  most  persevering  work 
and  study,  if  he  had  desire  and  ambition  to  maintain  him- 
self in  public  estimation  and  make  himself  in  his  profession 
the  equal  of  any  one  at  the  bar.  There  were  many  able 
men  in  the  Springfield  bar  of  that  day,  learned  in  the  law 
and  famed  in  later  3'ears  as  governors,  senators,  representa- 
tives, and  soldiers,  when  the  lawyer  who  kept  his  place  with 
them  was  sure  to  have  all  he  could  do  of  work  and 
application. 

Of  these  there  were,  that  became  famous,  Edwards,  an 
able,  learned  man,  who  had  been  governor,  and  Governor 
Eeynolds,  the  "sly  fox,"  who,  as  we  have  seen,  campaigned 
with  his  volunteers.  Then  there  was  Treat,  who  became 
one  of  the  ablest  jurists  of  the  land  for  a  lifetime;  Hardin, 
who  was  killed  at  Buena  Vista;  and  the  brilliant  senator, 
statesman,  and  soldier,  Edward  D.  Baker,  than  whom  no 
more  persuasive,  eloquent,  or  effective  speaker  ever  pleaded 
in  courts  or  Senate;  Douglas,  whom  we  know  to  have  had 
no  superior;  and  a  hundred  other  young  men,  whose  talents 
and  learning  made  them  the  equals  of  the  public  men  and 
statesmen  then  or  now. 

On  November  4,  1842,  Abraham  Lincoln  and  Mary  Todd 
were  married  in  Springfield,  at  the  residence  of  Governor 
Edwards.  Eev.  Charles  Dresser,  a  Presbyterian  minister, 
solemnized  the  marriage,  and  united  them  in  its  holy  bonds. 
Miss  Todd  was  a  Kentucky  girl,  where  she  grew  to  healthy, 
vigorous  womanhood.     She  was  a  reputable  lady  of  good 


276  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

family,  descended  from  the  people  who  made  the  beginning 
of  the  town  of  Lexington,  patriotic  enough  to  name  it  for 
the  battle  made  historic  in  the  founding  of  the  great  Ee- 
public.  She  was  not  celebrated  as  a  handsome  woman  as 
many  of  the  good  old  State  have  been,  but  she  had  a  fine  ap- 
pearance, a  cultivated,  easy,  and  very  agreeable  manner, 
always  sprightly,  energetic,  and  lively,  with  self-control 
and  refinement  that  made  her  attractive  and  entertaining. 

The  marriage  was  an  eligible  one.  Both  they  and  their 
friends  were  satisfied.  They  lived  happily  together,  and  the 
family  life  of  the  Lincolns  was  in  every  way  irreproachable. 
They  were  acquainted  for  two  years,  from  the  time  of  the 
lady's  first  visit  to  Springfield.  This  should  be  all  concern- 
ing such  an  event  that  should  be  told,  where  the  contracting 
parties  were  so  well  satisfied  and  lived  for  so  many  years 
in  the  quiet  content  and  happiness  of  family  and  social 
life,  where  nothing  ever  disturbed  the  easy-flowing  current 
of  those  who  lived  within  each  other. 

Nevertheless  rumor  and  the  inquisitive  Yankeeism  that 
will  let  nothing  alone,  regardless  how  cruel  and  hurtful 
the  doing,  or  how  sacred  or  homekeeping  the  subject  may 
be,  said,  "that  there  were  stories  about  Lincoln's  love  afEairs, 
that  he  was  thoughtful  and  sometimes  in  deep  melancholy, 
and  they  wondered  if  he  really  was  happy,  and  that  he  had 
written  some  desponding  letters."  This  was  partly  true. 
He  had  written  some  melancholy  letters  to  intimate  friends, 
particularly  the  Speeds  and  Major  Stuart,  who  knew  both 
parties  intimately,  who  were  indiscreet  enough  to  surrender 
them  for  publication.  These  stories  and  the  letters  all 
evidenced  the  fact  told  us  by  the  old  Negro  woman  in  Ken- 
tucky, which  was  true  of  Lincoln's  whole  life:  "That  Abe 
moped  round  an'  had  spells,  an'  we  all  got  mighty  feared 
that  he  was  losin'  hissef,  but  he  didn't.  He  was  all  right 
agin  in  a  day  or  two,  and  peart  as  ever." 

This  was  not  the  only  event  that  put  his  great  sensitive 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  277 

soul  in  deep  and  thoughtful  melancholy  for  a  period,  nor 
has  he  been  alone  so  affected  in  what  thousands  meet  and 
pass  so  indifferently.  He  was  a  kind,  deeply  thoughtful  man, 
who  never  met  any  duty  in  life  without  earnest  consider- 
ation and  the  absorbing  interest,  that  usually  brought  all 
there  was  of  doubt  or  burden  in  it  on  himself,  when  the 
apparent  responsibility  threw  him  into  those  periods  of 
gloom  and  melancholy.  We  will  find  them  again  in  every 
turn  as  new  difficulties  beset  him. 

It  appears  in  this  one,  and  it  should  not  be  omitted  here, 
that  the  great  change  coming  over  him  and  into  his  life,  and 
the  uncertainty  that  this  responsibility  created,  threw  him 
into  deep  thoughtfulness — a  mirthful  or  less  serious  subject 
to  some  of  his  friends,  but  profound  and  doubtful  to  him — 
and  further  authenticated  in  that  he  was  young  and  suffi- 
ciently indiscreet  to  trust  his  heartaches  to  those  who 
weighed  them  as  they  did  their  pounds  of  gold,  and  "joked 
the  fellow  Avho  pouted  o'er  his  love." 

There  was  one  way  in  which  these  stories  should  have 
been  righted  in  those  days  of  compromise  and  piecemeal 
adjustment.  They  should  have  applied  Judge  Douglas's 
doctrine  of  non-intervention,  and  have  declared  that  mar- 
riage and  the  musings  of  sympathetic  persons  concerning 
it  were  "^domestic  institutions  under  the  Constitution,"  over 
which  the  public  should  be  respectful  enough  neither  to 
attempt  to  exercise  influence  nor  control,  especially  as  these 
subjects  were  so  emphatically  none  of  their  business. 

In  the  Presidential  campaign  of  1844,  Clay  was  for  the 
third  time  in  his  life  nominated  by  the  Whigs.  Freling- 
huysen,  of  New  Jersey,  was  on  the  ticket  for  Vice-Presi- 
dent. Van  Buren,  who  had  succeeded  Jackson  from  1836  to 
1840,  who  was  defeated  by  Harrison  in  the  latter  year,  was 
confident  of  receiving  the  Democratic  nomination.  Tyler, 
who  had  been  elected  Vice-President  with  Harrison  in  1840 
as  a  Whig,  on  his  succession  to  the  Presidency  betrayed  the 


278  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

Whig  party,  went  plump  into  the  body  of  the  Southern 
slavery  extensionists  at  once,  and  favored  and  forwarded 
their  schemes  with  the  full  power  and  influence  of  his  Ad- 
ministration for  the  annexation  of  Texas  and  as  much  other 
western  territory  as  might  be  gained  in  war  or  cession. 

It  so  came  about  that  in  1844,  as  the  result  of  incessant 
intrigue  and  scheme-projecting  for  their  institution,  the 
South  was  in  a  better  condition  for  another  breaking  up  of 
compromises  than  they  had  been  since  1820,  and  would  not 
submit  to  the  nomination  of  Van  Buren,  a  Northern  man, 
who  was  equivocal  on  their  most  pronounced  purpose. 

The  nomination  of  Clay,  which  was  made,  first  paved 
the  way.  If  the  Whigs  could  nominate  a  Southern  man,  a 
slaveholder,  surely  the  better  trained  and  disciplined  Demo- 
cratic party  could  as  well.  There  never  was  a  better  planned 
and  executed  campaign  than  that  of  the  slave  extensionists 
that  year.  They  would  have  won  with  Clay,  for  he  was 
known  not  to  be  much,  if  at  all,  opposed  to  annexation,  and 
before  the  election,  becoming  alarmed,  after  having  been 
for  months  almost  sure  of  success,  he  wrote  a  letter  approv- 
ing it  without  qualification. 

The  Democrats  were  not  willing  to  risk  Van  Buren  on  ' 
their  vital  question.  They  would  have  preferred  Clay  if  the 
contest  had  been  between  them.  They  made  preparation, 
and  united  all  their  delegates  in  support  of  one  of  their  most 
experienced  and  best  qualified  statesmen,  James  K.  Polk,  of 
Tennessee,  who  had  long  been  a  representative  in  Congress, 
a  fearless,  well-trained,  determined  leader,  who  had  been 
one  of  Calhoun's  associates  in  public  life,  and  one  of  his 
most  zealous  believers,  fully  agreeing  in  the  plans  and  poli- 
cies of  Calhoun  himself. 

When  the  Convention  met,  Van  Buren  had  a  majority  of 
the  delegates,  who  repeatedly  voted  for  him.  But  the 
Southern  leaders  realized  their  opportunity,  and  instead  of 
agreeing  to  a  majority  selection,  which  was  the  custom  of 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  279 

all  other  parties  and  of  their  own,  except  when  the  slave 
section  could  not  maintain  its  power  under  such  common  and 
sensible  methods,  an  old,  almost  forgotten  rule  requiring  the 
assent  of  two-thirds  of  the  votes  before  a,nj  nomination  was 
declared,  if  objection  was  made,  was  revived,  and  held  to  be 
a  binding  rule  at  the  time. 

The  enforcement  of  this  rule  defeated  Van  Buren,  as  it 
did  several  candidates  afterwards,  and  was  one  of  the  un- 
democratic processes  by  which  the  South  so  long  retained 
control  of  the  Democratic  part}',  and  eventually  ruined  it 
so  far  as  to  retire  it  from  public  affairs  for  twenty-four  years 
or  more. 

It  was  the  summer  of  1842  that  Lincoln,  Baker,  and 
Hardin  were  candidates  for  the  Whig  party  nomination  to 
Congress.  The  district  had  a  small  Whig  majority  when  a 
popular  candidate  was  selected,  such  as  Stuart.  The  State 
was  Democratic,  and  no  small  part  of  the  reasons  why  the 
district  was  not  so  was  because  of  the  political  ability  and 
indefatigable  labor  of  Lincoln.  Being  the  capital  district 
there  were,  as  in  the  law  profession,  many  capable,  aspiring 
men  whose  ambition  usually  took  them  into  politics.  It  was 
nevertheless  uncommon  that  in  a  Congressional  district  there 
should  be  three  such  coming  leaders  as  Hardin,  Baker,  and 
Lincoln,  all  of  whom  were  destined  to  high  distinction,  fear- 
less patriotic  service,  violent  and  tragic  death  in  the  dis- 
charge of  duty. 

Hardin  received  the  nomination  in  1842,  Baker  in  1844. 
It  is  noticeable  in  this,  as  it  continued  to  be,  that  though 
Lincoln  was  the  man  of  affairs,  the  contriving  and  resource- 
ful manager  in  his  party  without  anything  like  an  equal, 
when  desirable  positions  were  at  hand  he  good-naturedly 
helped  nominate  and  elect  some  one  else,  as  he  did  Hardin 
and  Baker. 

In  those  days  of  "hard  cider,"  and  many  harder  and 
stronger  liquors,  there  was  a  deal  of  intemperance  every- 


280  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

where,  and  the  country  was  full  of  drunkards,  made  so  in 
part  perhaps  by  abundant  and  low-priced  liquor.  It  was  a 
"devil's  broth,"  and  not  only  intoxicated  and  drove  men 
mad  drunk,  but  killed  almost  as  surely  as  it  brutalized  the 
sense  and  soul  of  its  victims.  The  land  was  filled  with  the 
wrecks  and  remnants  of  what  had  been  talented,  industrious, 
and  promising  men.  There  was  not  a  vocation  or  industrial 
occupation  that  had  not  been  robbed  of  many  of  its  brightest 
members,  who  went  down  ingloriously,  while  their  brothers 
were  struggling  and  fighting  for  better  lives  and  higher 
standards  of  living.  When  thousands  of  devoted  men  and 
women  were  arousing  themselves  to  work  and  organized  en- 
deavor to  save  these  poisoned  victims  from  a  worse  than 
living  death,  society  was  full  of  this  unbridled  drinking- 
habit.  The  law  offices,  the  courts,  legislative,  executive, 
and  judicial  bodies  were  stricken,  leaving  every  year  thou- 
sands of  the  best,  the  bravest,  and  most  useful  men  of  their 
time  in  the  epidemic  that  killed  the  body,  the  mind,  and 
the  soul. 

It  was  part  of  Lincoln's  character,  and  a  stern,  un- 
flinching, and  determined  part  of  it  throughout  his  life,  to 
live  up  to  as  high  moral  standards  in  every  part  of  his  life 
and  labor.  This  he  honestly  adhered  to  and  carried  out, 
no  matter  what  were  the  influences  surrounding  him  in 
those  days,  when,  if  men  were  not  more  honest,  they  were 
more  outspoken  and  candid  than  sometimes  later.  In  a  court 
and  bar  and  attaches  of  twenty  to  thirty  men,  many  of  whom 
were  young  and  forming  their  character,  he  would  be  the 
only  one  who  did  not  use  liquor  or  tobacco  in  any  way.  He 
was  never  obnoxious  nor  in  the  slightest  degree  imperti- 
nent in  his  work  to  try  to  reform  or  adjust  any  one's  life 
to  his  own  ideas  of  living,  but  in  his  unobtrusive  ways  and 
steady  example,  he  led  many  a  poor,  characterless  man  to 
good  or  better  standing,  and  led  a  pure,  blameless  life  in  act 
and  powerful  example  that  will  make  a  purer  American 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  281 

manhood  when  Lincoln,  our  most  complete  and  finished 
man,  becomes  our  national  ideal. 

In  those  years  of  cheap  whisky,  dwarfed  lives,  and  rum- 
rotted  intellects,  he  heartily  united  with  a  company  of  the 
brave  and  fearless  men  and  women  of  the  time  in  about  the 
first  crusading  organization  against  the  drinking,  sure-kill- 
ing rum-habit — "The  Washingtonians,"  a  famous  temper- 
ance society,  that  saved  many  a  victim  and  accomplished 
wondrous  good  in  its  day.  He  was  an  organizer,  and  in 
visits  to  difi'erent  places  he  organized  and  started  several 
healthy  local  temperance  societies.  As  an  illustration  of 
his  early  powers  and  his  zeal  in  the  cause,  it  is  preserved 
that  at  one  of  these  organizing  meetings  he  said,  in  part: 
"Washington  is  the  mightiest  name  of  earth  long  since  in 
the  cause  of  civil  liberty,  still  mightiest  in  moral  reforma- 
tion. On  that  name  no  eulogy  is  expected.  It  can  not  be. 
To  add  brightness  to  the  sun  or  glory  to  the  name  of  Wash- 
ington is  alike  impossible.  Let  no  one  attempt  it.  In  sol- 
emn awe  we  pronounce  the  name,  and  in  its  naked,  death- 
less splendor  leave  it  shining  on." 

One  of  the  pertinent  reasons  why  Lincoln  was  so  little 
understood  in  his  day  by  the  men  with  him  and  about  him 
was  because  of  the  flagrant  dissipation  that  was  seen  con- 
stantly all  around  him,  and  in  which  he  never  participated. 
There  were  men  that  often  had  business  with  him  who 
could  not  help  knowing  something  of  his  qualifications  and 
capacities,  yet  whose  entire  and  only  knowledge  of  him 
was  gathered  from  their  business  relations;  but  they,  by 
reason  of  habits  and  differing  beliefs,  were  as  ignorant  of 
the  inner  greatness  of  the  man  as  though  they  had  never 
seen  or  known  him. 

When  he  was  through  the  business  of  the  court  or  as- 
sembly, that  was  often  composed  of  the  jolly,  bibulous,  dis- 
sipated men  whose  society  he  never  enjoyed,  he  left  them 
at  once  for  his  home,  his  office,  or  some  quiet  place,  where 


282  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

he  read  or  studied;  and,  if  without  books  or  sympathizing 
friends,  he  used  to  ponder  in  his  thoughtful  melancholy, 
and  frame  those  startling  descriptions  and  heroic  thoughts 
that,  like  some  trenchant  blade,  cut  their  way  through  the 
first  dismal  load  of  ignorance  or  wrong  that  met  him.  There 
is  nothing  more  delightful  or  imperishable  in  one's  thoughts 
than  the  talk  of  an  hour  with  him  after  the  dull  day's  work 
and  tedious  pleadings  in  the  courtroom,  when  lightened 
of  labor  for  a  little  rest  and  reflection.  His  pleasing  waySj 
his  timely  and  clear-headed  advice,  always  to  higher  pur- 
poses or  better  performance,  his  wit  and  humor,  that  passed 
like  a  little  stream  through  a  green  meadow  in  June,  were 
BO  charming  that  they  will  last  and  restore  themselves  when 
memory  recurs  to  them. 

In  the  memorable  campaign  of  18-1-i  he  was  not  nomi- 
nated for  Congress,  though  entitled  to  a  nomination  by 
party  service  and  general  consent;  but  he  yielded  to  Baker, 
who  was  young,  ambitious,  and  very  anxious.  He  was  not 
nominated  for  governor,  which  office  he  declined,  but  pa- 
tiently submitted  again  as  the  man  of  all  work,  became  a 
member  of  the  Whig  committee  for  the  management  and 
conduct  of  the  campaign,  and  an  elector-at-large  for  the 
State.  In  the  work  of  that  year  he  took  a  more  active  and 
energetic  part  than  ever.  He  had  reached  a  better  de- 
velopment, a  fuller  knowledge  of  his  wonderful  powers  "to 
reason  with  the  people,  and,  in  the  use  of  facts,  illustrate 
and  establish  our  beliefs." 

The  Whig  platform  that  year  was  in  favor  of  Clay's  pro- 
tective tariff,  a  national  bank,  and  distribution  of  the  pro- 
ceeds of  the  sales  of  public  lands  to  be  divided  among  the 
States  for  internal  improvements.  Calhoun  had  not  only 
committed  the  Democratic  party  to  his  pro-slavery  plans, 
but  to  "free  trade"  also — an  industrial  system  fitted  to  the 
cheapest  form  of  labor,  with  no  imposts  on  manufactured 
wares  or  articles,  nor   on  the  production  of  agricultural 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  283 

crops  by  men  in  competition  with  slave  labor,  and  no  pro- 
tection to  manufacturers  or  their  employees,  which  the 
Whig  party,  by  its  policy,  favored  and  contemplated.  A 
stronger  claim  of  the  Whigs  to  jjopular  favor  was  thought 
to  be  the  treacherous  abandonment  of  his  party  by  Tyler, 
elected  a  Whig,  but  who,  upon  his  succession,  became  the 
most  supple  and  serviceable  President  which  the  slave- 
extensionists  ever  won  to  their  cause  or  placed  in  authority. 

If  Clay  had  been  as  firm  in  his  party  belief  as  Webster, 
or  even  as  much  so  as  Scott,  and  maintained  his  opposition 
to  the  admission  of  Texas  at  the  time  as  premature,  if  for 
no  other  reason,  his  chances  for  election  could  scarcely  have 
been  better  than  they  were  in  June  of  that  year;  but  when 
the  South  accomplished  Polk's  nomination.  Clay  became 
alarmed  at  the  desertions  going  on  all  around  him  in  the 
South.  To  stem  the  disastrous  tide,  he  wrote  what  was 
called  the  'Alabama  Letter,"  ambiguously  written,  but  cir- 
culated and  construed  in  the  South  as  an  assent  to  annexa- 
tion. This  was  a  serious  blunder,  such,  however,  as  com- 
promisers are  always  forced  to  on  questions  of  principle, 
or  even  policies  based  on  sectional  or  racial  divisions.  It 
gained  him  no  strength  in  the  South,  and  did  not  stop  the 
disintegration  in  his  party.  He  was  too  late,  and  they  were 
entirely  satisfied  with  Polk,  who  was  free  from  any  anti- 
slavery  record  or  sentiment  like  that  of  Clay's,  "That  the 
system  of  slavery  would  eventually  give  way  and  be  abol- 
ished in  the  strength  of  overwhelming  population  and  in 
its  competition  with  free  labor." 

The  letter  did  lose  him  the  support  in  the  North  which 
would  have  elected  him.  Thousands  of  anti-slavery  Whigs 
joined  the  Free  Soil  or  Abolition  party,  turning  New  York 
and  some  other  States  to  Polk,  which  made  Clay's  third 
and  final  defeat  for  President.  He  was  a  remarkable  man 
in  many  respects,  followed  more  sincerely  and  tenaciously 
because  of  his  wonderful  personality  than  any  leader  in 


284  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

politics  since  Washington.  This  is  shown  in  the  devotion 
of  Lincoln  and  thousands  of  sincere  anti-extensionists,  who 
faithfully  supported  him,  not  because  of  his  belief  on  the 
most  important  subject — for  he  appeared  to  have  none — 
but  for  their  faith  in  the  integrity  and  capabilities  of  the 
man.  Late  in  the  canvass,  alarmed  at  the  defection  in 
the  Northern  States,  he  wrote  again,  affirming  his  objec- 
tions to  annexation  at  the  time.  The  Whig  position  on 
annexation  was  unnatural,  almost  untenable;  for  Bowie, 
Travis,  Crockett,  and  Fannin,  all  Americans,  with  hundreds 
of  volunteers  like  them,  had  gone  down  in  glorious  sacrifice 
at  Goliad  and  the  Alamo;  and  Sam  Houston  had  won  his 
great  victory  at  Jacinto,  that  secured  independence,  and 
made  Texas  a  nation.  They  were  our  own  people,  had  won 
in  their  fight  for  a  nation  and  the  magnificent  domain  of 
an  empire,  with  our  own  people  in  control  of  it,  and  they 
were  anxious  to  join  us.  The  heart  of  the  American  people 
went  out  to  them,  notwithstanding  the  spread  of  slavery, 
which  was  not  looked  after  in  time. 

When  the  eventual  control  came  to  us  in  war,  there 
was  no  delinquency  on  the  part  of  our  people;  and  the 
volunteers  from  Illinois  and  Kentucky,  under  Hardin  and 
Clay,  who  fell  in  victory  at  Buena  Vista  were  gallant  and 
brave  and  as  decided  for  annexation  as  the  Mississippi  vol- 
unteers under  Jefferson  Davis.  It  so  happened  that  the 
victorious  leaders  of  those  volunteer  armies  that  made  the 
Nation  continental — Scott  and  Taylor — were  Whigs,  and 
were  afterwards  nominated  by  the  Whig  party  for  President: 
Taylor  in  1848,  when  he  was  elected,  and  Scott  in  1852, 
when  he  was  defeated,  both  of  whom  were  selected  as  can- 
didates because  of  their  military  service  and  distinction. 

The  acquisition  of  Texas  was  as  inevitable  in  that  day 
as  that  the  United  States  is  the  predominating  power  in 
North,  Central,  and  South  America.  Webster,  through 
the  Tyler  Administration,  and  subsequently  in  the  Senate, 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  285 

with  the  help  of  Judge  Douglas  and  a  few  Northern  Demo- 
crats, in  the  negotiations  of  that  period,  saved  to  us  Oregon 
and  Washington.  Had  it  not  been  for  the  narrow-sighted 
Administration  of  Polk,  we  would  have  held  the  Pacific 
coast  country  without  a  break  to  the  line  of  the  Eussian 
possessions,  since  purchased.  But  the  justice  then  denied 
us  is  yet  within  our  reach  and  power  to-day,  whenever  it 
may  be  necessary  to  exercise  it,  and  take  the  contiguous  and 
similarly-populated  region  from  Vancouver  to  Mt.  Elias, 
and  the  whole  territory  of  the  Mackenzie  and  Yukon 
Kivers. 

Lincoln's  fealty  and  faith  in  Clay  was  undoubted  proof 
of  the  sterling  qualities  of  the  man.  He  was  in  almost 
every  one  of  the  more  than  one  hundred  counties,  in  which 
his  powerful  addresses  were  as  strong  tributes  to  the  leader 
as  they  were  complete  in  political  faith  and  belief.  He, 
like  many  Whigs,  mourned  the  defeat  of  Clay  as  an  irrep- 
arable loss.  For  himself  he  had  the  dawning  ambition  of 
the  success  of  the  man  and  the  policy  that  would  settle 
the  unadjusted  and,  at  that  time,  unadjustable  slavery  ques- 
tion on  the  lines  of  a  gradual  extinction  of  the  evil,  as  fore- 
shadowed in  one  of  Clay's  explanatory  letters,  which,  in 
Lincoln's  opinion,  cost  him  the  election. 

These  were  the  rays  of  the  morning  light  on  the  path- 
way which  he  was  to  tread  in  faithful  service,  devotion,  and 
sacrifice.  Then,  as  the  subject  was  uppermost  in  Clay's 
letter,  it  filled  Lincoln's  mind,  as  the  writer  often  heard 
him  tell  in  later  years,  when  he  said:  "The  slavery  question 
often  bothered  me  as  far  back  as  183G-40.  I  was  troubled 
and  grieved  over  it;  but  after  the  annexation  of  Texas  I 
gave  it  up,  believing,  as  I  now  do  [1854],  that  God  will 
settle  it,  and  settle  it  right,  and  that  he  will,  in  some  in- 
scrutable way,  restrict  the  spread  of  so  great  an  evil;  but 
for  the  present  it  is  our  duty  to  wait," 

We  see  by  this  that  in  the  year  1844  there  was  a  dis- 


286  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

tinct  thought  that  God  would,  in  some  way,  light  the  way, 
and  that  he  would  follow — impressions  that  grew  and 
strengthened  in  development.  In  his  party  address,  1844, 
which  he  prepared,  came  more  of  the  breaking  light:  "That 
union  is  strength  is  a  truth  that  has  been  known,  illus- 
trated, and  declared  in  various  ways  and  forms  in  all  ages 
of  the  world.  That  great  fabulist  and  philosopher,  ^sop, 
illustrated  it  by  his  fable  of  the  bundle  of  sticks,  and  He, 
whose  wisdom  surpasses  that  of  all  philosophers,  has  de- 
clared that  a  house  divided  against  itself  can  not  stand." 

Thus  it  came  to  him  as  far  back  as  1844,  in  the  light 
of  a  prophecy  foreshadowing  the  coming  division  on  the 
slave  question.  It  was  to  be  defined  in  many  forms  and  by 
statesmen  of  many  differing  opinions  and  qualifications; 
but  it  was  given  to  the  plain,  strong-minded  Lincoln  to 
express  the  foundation  fact  on  the  principles  and  in  the 
language  of  the  Master  himself.  It  was  the  strongest  de- 
nunciation ever  uttered  against  the  system;  for  if  it  would 
divide  the  house  of  the  Nation  it  was  indeed  a  woeful  and 
perilous  wrong.  This  was  Lincoln's  prophecy  or  foreshadow- 
ing of  the  coming  storm  seventeen  years  before  it  burst 
upon  us. 

Lincoln's  association  with  Logan  strengthened  him  in 
every  moral  purpose;  for  in  addition  to  the  regular  methods 
of  conducting  business,  studious,  orderly  habits  prevailed, 
and  the  idleness  and  dissipation  which  ran  in  so  many  law 
offices  was  never  thought  of  or  permitted. 

In  December,  1844,  after  the  election  of  Polk,  when 
Congress  met,  there  was  a  majority  in  both  branches  in 
favor  of  the  annexation  of  Texas.  The  election  of  Polk 
over  so  popular  a  leader  as  Clay  was  due  to  Clay's  ambi- 
tious desire  to  conciliate  the  two  positive  factions  of  his 
party  and  supporters  in  the  beginning,  and  be  elected  on 
the  basis  of  compromising  the  difficulties,  as  had  been  done 
before.     Both  factions  distrusted  him,  resulting  in  a  pro- 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  287 

noimced  victory  for  Polk  and  the  Annexationists.  Both 
Houses  of  Congress  passed  resolutions  instructing  President 
Tyler  to  proceed  in  negotiations  for  the  admission  of  Texas 
as  one  of  the  States  of  the  Union. 

President  Jones,  of  the  Texan  Eepublic,  called  its  Con- 
gress into  extra  session  at  the  same  time.  Commissioners 
were  at  once  appointed,  and  the  terms  of  settlement  and 
admission  were  pushed  forward  to  a  conclusion  as  rapidly 
as  possible  in  that  day,  when  communication  between  Wash- 
ington City  and  Austin,  Texas,  took  weeks  for  what  could 
now  be  done  in  as  many  days.  In  order  to  gratify  Tyler's 
desire  to  accomplish  the  admission  during  his  term,  an  in- 
formal agreement  between  the  Commissioners  was  approved 
by  him  a  few  hours  before  the  end  of  his  term,  March  4, 
1845,  and  Texas,  by  a  joint  resolution  of  Congress,  was 
annexed  and  declared  to  be  United  States  territory. 

The  act  of  Congress  providing  for  its  admission  as  a 
State  was  not  agreed  to  until  the  first  session  of  the  next 
Congress,  in  December,  1845.  These  events  brought  about 
immediate  and  very  important  results  in  our  history.  It 
was,  first,  a  signal  success,  so  far,  of  the  plans  of  the  slave- 
extensionists.  Slavery  had  been  introduced  into  the  terri- 
tory as  fast  as  the  American,  or,  as  it  was  called,  the  Texan, 
occupation  progressed.  The  emigration  that  filled  it  as 
fast  as  it  was  taken  was  about  all  from  the  slave  States. 
Those  of  the  settlers  who  owned  slaves  took  them  along, 
so  that,  at  the  time  of  annexation,  there  was  not  a  settle- 
ment in  the  added  territory  where  slavery  did  not  exist. 
The  agreement,  or  act  of  cession  and  admission,  further 
provided  that,  as  soon  as  population  and  the  convenience 
of  the  inhabitants  justified,  the  Territory  might  be  subdi- 
vided, and  four  other  States — five  in  all — might  be  made 
and  admitted  as  States.  Calhoun  and  his  hierarchy  were 
not  mistaken  in  their  opinion  that  their  powers  were  vastly 
increased. 


CHAPTER  XIII. 

THE  opponents  of  annexation  had  predicted  war  with 
Mexico  as  a  certain  result.  The  Tyler  and  Polk  Admin- 
istrations expected  nothing  less;  and  the  little  prepara- 
tion that  was  possible  under  the  laws  then  in  force  was 
made.  As  it  was  expected,  Mexico  resisted  the  appropria- 
tion, without  its  assent,  of  territory  that  had  belonged  to 
it  and  had  been  a  part  of  its  domain  since  its  independence 
and  treaty  with  Spain,  about  182-i.  A  heavy  Mexican  force 
of  more  than  twenty  thousand  was  moved  up  to  the 
line  of  the  Bio  Grande,  under  command  of  two  of  their 
most  experienced  officers — Generals  Arista  and  Ampudia. 
General  Zachary  Taylor,  one  of  the  most  energetic  and  ex- 
perienced officers  of  our  little  army,  was  sent  forward  to 
the  Rio  Grande  with  a  small  force  in  the  summer  of  184:5. 
General  Taylor  held  the  line  of  the  Neuces  River  with 
his  force  until  about  March,  1846,  when^  by  direction 
of  the  President,  he  moved  westward,  and  occupied  the 
east  side  of  the  Rio  Grande,  opposite  the  Mexican  city  of 
Matamora,  which  was,  without  doubt,  an  overt  act,  in  effect, 
the  beginning  of  hostilities.  Taylor  was  about  sixty  years 
of  age,  bronzed  with  the  Southern  sun  and  hardened  by 
healthy  outdoor  exercise;  but  he  was  still  an  able  man, 
not  past  his  prime.  He  had  seen  almost  forty  years  of  pio- 
neer military  service  in  the  Florida,  Cherokee,  Seminole, 
and  other  Indian  wars,  and  so  well  adapted,  known,  and 
experienced  in  Indian  warfare  that  he  knew  personally  al- 
most every  chief  of  a  hundred  warriors  or  more  who  had 
fought  and  resisted  the  United  States  for  more  than  forty 

years. 

288 


THE  MEN  OF  TITS  TTME.  289 

He  was  a  soldier  trained  in  the  actual  field  of  war.  He 
was  an  American,  too,  without  a  superior  in  action  at  the 
time,  and  with  skill,  aptitude,  and  strength  and  celerity  to 
get  into  a  fight  and  stay  there,  with  no  other  thought  than 
certain  victory.  These  qualities  were  so  thoroughly  wrought 
into  his  character  that  he  had  been  known  in  the  army  and 
over  the  Western  and  Southern  frontier  for  many  years  as 
"Eough-and-ready"  Zach.  Taylor.  He  often  had  been  and 
was  always  ready  for  an  Indian  fight  in  two  or  three  min- 
utes. His  maxim  was,  "JS'ot  to  be  ready  to  fight  on  five 
minutes'  notice,  but  without  it."  He  was  in  no  way  rash 
or  imprudent,  but,  as  a  frontier  soldier  had  to  be,  was 
always  ready  to  fight  with  whatever  force  he  had,  and  to 
make  the  best  of  it  in  the  use  of  every  resource  at  hand, 
"and  never  pay  enough  attention  to  being  licked  to  think 
about  it,  but  be  sure  to  win  every  time  you  fight." 

General  Taylor  built  Fort  Brown  at  the  mouth  of  the 
Eio  Grande  in  March  and  April,  1846.  In  May,  General 
Arista,  with  a  ]\Iexican  force,  crossed  to  the  east  side  of 
the  river.  His  command  numbered  six  thousand.  Taylor 
met  him  with  his  force  of  twenty-three  hundred  at  Palo 
Alto,  a  small  stream,  and  defeated  him  after  an  engagement 
of  five  hours,  in  which  one  hundred  Mexicans  were  killed 
and  wounded.  The  American  loss  was  four  killed  and  forty 
wounded.  The  Mexicans  retreated  from  the  field  of  Palo 
Alto  after  the  battle,  on  the  8th  of  May,  to  Resaca,  a  ravine, 
where  the  Americans  defeated  Arista  again  the  next  day, 
May  9th.  The  losses  in  killed  and  wounded  were  about  the 
same.  In  the  disorderly  retreat,  with  the  obstruction  of  the 
river,  the  Mexicans  lost  about  one  thousand  captured,  some 
field  pieces,  and  more  arms  than  prisoners. 

The  American  forces  crossed  the  Rio  Grande,  May  18th, 

and    took   possession    of   Matamora   with    little    resistance. 

On  the  19th  of  September,  1846,  General  Taylor  invested 

the  fortified  city  of  Monterey,  farther  to  the  southwest.     A 

19 


290  ABB  AH  AM  LINCOLN. 

siege  was  begun  and  carried  on  with  daring  and  bravery 
and  the  capture  of  the  outer  works  on  the  second  and  third 
days.  On  the  24th  of  September,  General  Ampudia  surren- 
dered the  city  and  all  its  military  supplies,  arms,  and  equip- 
ments, and  six  thousand  prisoners.  The  American  loss  was 
a  hundred  and  twenty  killed  and  three  hundred  and  sixty- 
eight  wounded.  The  Mexican  loss  was  not  ascertained;  but 
it  was  much  less,  as  they  fought  behind  fortifications  and 
inclosures. 

After  this  signal  victory,  through  influences  at  Wash- 
ington which  were  never  disclosed.  General  Taylor  was  vir- 
tually superseded,  and  the  plan  of  campaign,  as  it  had  been 
designed  and,  so  far,  successfully  conducted  under  him,  was 
entirely  changed.  Instead  of  re-enforcing  General  Taylor 
and  sustaining  him  in  his  campaign  through  northeast 
Mexico,  by  the  way  of  San  Luis  Potosi,  against  the  capital. 
City  of  Mexico,  another  force  was  gathered  and  landed  at 
Vera  Cruz,  on  the  Gulf,  under  command  of  General  Winfield 
Scott,  March  9,  1847. 

Taylor,  at  Monterey,  was  not  re-enforced,  but  most  of 
his  best-trained  men  joined  Scott  under  orders,  leaving  Tay- 
lor with  five  thousand  men,  only  five  hundred  of  whom 
had  ever  been  under  fire.  Scott  landed  and  invested  Vera 
Cruz  with  a  force  of  about  twelve  thousand,  while  Taylor 
was  left  facing  the  strongest  Mexican  army  in  the  field 
under  General  Santa  Ana  of  not  less  than  twenty  thousand. 
While  holding  Montere}'',  about  two  hundred  miles  south- 
west from  Matamora,  his  base  had  been  advanced  to  Sal- 
tillo,  one  hundred  miles  further;  and  he  was  preparing  for 
an  advance  on  San  Luis  Potosi  when  more  than  half  of  his 
best-trained  troops  were  ordered  to  join  Scott. 

Taylor,  however,  was  doing  the  very  best  he  could  with 
the  small  force  left  him.  He  marched  out  of  Saltillo  a  few 
miles  to  Buena  Vista,  a  mountain  pass,  on  the  22d  of 
February,   1847,  when  Santa  Ana,  with  his  best-equipped 


THE  MEN  OF  II IS  TIME.  291 

army,  attacked  the  Americans.  The  battle  fought  there 
on  the  22d  and  23d  was  the  severest  and  most  desperately- 
contested  engagement  of  the  war.  Five  thousand  half- 
trained  Americans  defeated  over  four  times  their  number 
in  that  bloody  little  valley,  less  than  a  half  mile  wide,  and 
held  possession  of  the  iield  and  the  territory,  making  it  one 
of  the  really  great  achievements  in  war. 

The  American  loss  was  heavy:  seven  hundred  and  forty- 
six  killed  and  wounded,  among  them  Colonel  Henry  Clay, 
Jr.,  son  of  the  chief  Whig  leader,  and  Colonel  Hardin,  of 
Illinois,  who  has  been  mentioned  as  the  Whig  member  of 
Congress  elected  from  the  Springfield  District.  The  Mex- 
ican loss  was  heavy.  Over  two  thousand  were  killed  and 
wounded.  Several  hundred  prisoners  and  great  quantities 
of  arms,  including  several  field-guns,  and  large  military  sup- 
plies, were  captured.  This  was  the  concluding  victory  in 
northeast  Mexico.  Taylor  remained  in  possession  of  all 
the  territory  he  had  taken  until  the  close  of  the  war. 

On  the  9th  of  March,  1847,  General  Scott  invested  the 
city  and  fortifications  of  Vera  Cruz  with  his  force  of  about 
twelve  thousand.  On  the  26th,  the  castle  of  San  Juan 
capitulated,  and  on  the  29th  the  garrison  of  five  thousand, 
with  forts,  equipments,  arms,  and  all  their  supplies,  sur- 
rendered. On  the  8th  of  April  he  marched  westward  into 
the  elevated  mountain  country,  on  the  celebrated  campaign 
which  ended  in  the  capture  and  capitulation  of  Jalapa  on 
the  19th,  Puebla  on  May  15th,  and  on  the  10th  of  August 
he  M^as  confronting  the  City  of  Mexico. 

Besides  skirmishing  and  lesser  engagements  all  the  way, 
Scott's  American  army  fought  the  battles  of  Cerro  Gordo, 
on  April  19th;  Contrer'as  and  Churubusco,  on  August  10th 
and  12th;  Chapultepec,  on  September  8th  and  13th,  and 
the  City  of  ]\Texico  on  the  14th.  After  the  storming  and 
capture  of  the  latter,  the  Americans  marched  into  and  oc- 
cupied the  capital  city  with  an  effective  force  of  less  than 


292  ABBAHAM  LINCOLN. 

five  thousand.  The  American  loss  in  killed  and  wounded 
on  the  campaign  was  2,703,  of  which  383  were  olhcers  and 
2,320  were  enlisted  men,  in  a  force  of  10,000 — one  out  of 
every  three  in  action.  No  American  campaigns,  outside 
of  our  own  country,  have  ever  equaled  those  of  Taylor  and 
Scott  in  Mexico. 

General  James  Shields  was  severely  wounded  at  Cerro 
Gordo,  where  a  grapeshot  passed  through  his  right  lung, 
from  which  he  recovered,  showing  the  remarkable  vitality 
of  the  man;  for  of  those  so  wounded  in  battle  few  indeed 
survive. 

Xo  nation  since  the  dawning  of  history  ever  passed 
through  more  rapid,  widespreading,  continent-embracing, 
important,  wonderful,  and  bewildering  changes,  or  more 
startling  and  unexpected  ones,  or  ever  entered  a  field  of 
such  transcending  development,  as  the  United  States  did 
by  and  in  consequence  of  the  war  with  Mexico.  The  writer 
was  young,  but  remembers  well  what  the  able  leaders  of 
the  day  of  all  parties  held  as  results  that  would  inevitably 
come  to  us ;  but  after  Webster,  Calhoun,  Clay,  Benton,  Cass, 
Douglas,  Baker,  Shields,  Yates,  and  Lincoln,  and  a  thou- 
sand others,  had  said  all  in  their  power,  with  the  strength 
and  fervor  of  the  great  men  they  were,  we  have  lived  to 
see  it  all  surpassed  a  hundred-fold  in  astonishing  achieve- 
ments, with  more  of  reality  and  progress  than  the  wildest 
fantasies  of  their  most  buoyant  hopes  and  ambitions. 

There  was  no  territorial  need  for  Texas,  except  for  the 
extension  of  slavery,  which  it  Avas  schemed  to  effect,  and 
was  surely  and  certainly  done  with  this  object  in  view;  for 
the  slavery-propagandists  had  entire  control.  In  their  plan 
territory  was  needed,  not  for  the  actiial  wants  of  their  sys- 
tem at  the  time,  but  to  even  up  and  hold  the  balance  of 
power  over  the  free  States  and  their  people,  who  were  so 
rapidly  advancing  into  free  territory  with  their  free  insti- 
tutions, and  building  powerful  free  States  to  the  great  West 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  293 

and  Northwest.  Thus  they  designed  to  keep  their  system 
apace  with  the  advance  of  freedom  and  ahead  of  it,  if  they 
could. 

Neither  the  Mexican  people  nor  their  Government  had 
given  cause  or  provocation  for  the  war  of  slavery  extension 
against  them;  but  actual  war  makes  cause,  and  when  the 
Americans  were  fighting  for  life  and  the  Texas  territory 
or  nation,  the  great  heart  and  sympathy  of  kindred  people 
went  out  to  them.  With  few  exceptions,  the  fellow-feeling 
and  helpful  sentiment  prevailed,  without  regard  to  slavery. 
When  American  blood  was  so  freely  shed  at  Goliad,  the 
Alamo,  and  San  Jacinto,  there  came  the  rugged  determina- 
tion that  our  heroic  brethren  should  be  sustained  as  well 
in  Texas  as  in  the  great  Northwest  Dakotas;  and  as  the 
territory  was  contiguous,  it  should  be  a  friendly  new  nation, 
or  be  annexed,  as  its  brave  defenders  desired. 

Thus  the  war  came  and  was  fought  to  surprising  victory 
in  the  few  months  of  1846-47.  The  Americans  under  Tay- 
lor and  Scott  won  the  conflict  with  more  positive  victory 
and  renowned  heroism  of  armies  of  five  and  ten  thousand 
against  a  nation  of  several  millions  than  the  capture  of 
half  a  continent  by  Cortez  in  the  sixteenth  century. 

When  the  Mexican  nation  was  taken  captive  in  the  au- 
tumn of  1847,  it  was  disclosed  to  our  soldiers  and  soldier 
statesmen — such  as  Doniphan,  Bonneville,  and  Fremont — 
that  the  Mexicans  held  territorial  right  and  control,  includ- 
ing Northwest  Texas,  of  an  immense  region,  almost  unpopu- 
lated by  Mexicans,  Spaniards,  or  others  than  Indians,  larger 
than  that  held  in  their  Eepublic  of  States  builded  somewhat 
on  our  system.  This  vast  region,  from  the  Sabine  River, 
and  the  east  of  Texas,  along  the  Gulf  and  the  thirty  to  thirty- 
second  parallels  of  latitude  to  the  Pacific  Ocean — over  fifteen 
hundred  miles — thence  northwestward  up  the  Pacific  coast- 
line the  full  length  of  the  California  coast-line  of  over  eight 
hundred  miles,  to  the  south  line  of  Oregon — altogether  about 


294  ABRAH.UI  LINCOLN. 

twenty-five  hundred  miles  coast  and  territorial  lines — was 
taken  and  added  on  our  south  and  western  frontiers,  in- 
cluding an  extended  domain  of  over  six  hundred  and  thirty 
thousand  square  miles. 

Territory  was  added  out  of  which  have  been  constituted 
the  States  of  Texas,  California,  Xevada,  Colorado  (in  chief 
part),  and  Utah  and  the  Territories  of  ISTew  Mexico  and 
Arizona — an  vmknown  and  unbounded  region  at  the  time — 
out  of  which  ten  such  States,  equal  in  area  to  Illinois  and 
Missouri,  could  be  made,  with  agricultural  and  grazing  lands 
equal  to  any  two  nations  of  Southern  Europe,  with  a  ma- 
jestic line  of  lofty  dividing  mountains,  resplendent  in 
porphyry,  granite,  and  alabaster. 

These  vast  mountain  ranges  were  riven  and  seamed  with 
volcanic  projection  of  metals  and  quartz  in  such  unending 
and  squandering  extravagance  that  the  visions  of  Haroun 
Al  Easchid  were  only  an  idle  tale,  where  wealth  was  revealed 
and  taken  out  by  the  hundred  millions,  in  the  bosom  of 
these  basaltic  rocks.  The  fabled  wealth  of  the  Indies  was 
nothing  in  comparison  with  these  golden  treasures,  with- 
out beginning  or  end,  that  had,  for  centuries,  been  sought 
by  the  famishing  and  perishing  Spaniards  who  explored  the 
wastes  of  burning  sand  and  volcanic  rocks  that  lay  in  such 
abundance  beneath  their  blistered  feet.  These  were  all  now 
surrendered  to  the  Americans.  Thus  the  war  ended  as  it 
was  planned  and  projected  until  its  compensations  awak- 
ened a  new  era  that  the  slave-extensionists  did  not  antici- 
pate when  they  inaugurated  it,  to  conquer  and  acquire  the 
great  domain.  Providence  had  opened  the  way  for  the  be- 
ginning of  the  end  of  slavery. 

The  Mexicans  cared  so  little  for  the  great  territory  that 
they  ceded  it  to  us  when  it  was  negotiated  for,  valuing  it 
no  more  than  the  debris  and  waste  of  the  continent.  Such 
an  extension  of  free  institutions  and  free  States  followed 
that  the  wreck  and  ruin  of  slavery  at  once  began.    This  great 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  295 

region  was  opened  to  freedom,  forming  a  roadway  of  free 
States  in  a  continuous  belt  jutting  each  other,  from  the 
roughly-named  Hell  Gate  on  the  Atlantic  to  the  Golden  Gate 
on  the  placid  waters  of  the  Pacific. 

The  slavery-leaders  wanted  Texas,  and  planned  to  make 
five  slave  States  out  of  it,  as  an  overweight  in  the  balance 
of  political  power.  They  had  barely  got  one  out  of  it  when 
the  greater  free  State  of  California  came  with  it  in  the 
same  territorial  gift  or  surrender.  Before  the  treaty  was 
ratified,  and  while  our  army  of  occupation  was  making  posts 
along  the  Pacific  coast  to  institute  and  preserve  orderly 
Government,  gold — red  and  yellow  gold,  almost  in  heaps — 
was  discovered  in  "Sutter's  Mill-race." 

The  conquest  had  brought  us  and  opened  up  the  moun- 
tains and  the  plains  from  the  Missouri  to  the  western  coast. 
Afterwards  the  whole  region  was  free  to  the  treasure-seeker 
and  gold-hunter;  and  before  the  Abolitionists  had  enter- 
tained the  thought,  the  keen  wits  and  never-failing  percep- 
tions of  the  slave-leaders  discovered  that  the  slave-exten- 
sion movement  to  the  Pacific  would  end  with  Texas;  for  in 
a  mining  region  full  of  rare  and  valuable  metals  and  daring, 
adventurous  men,  slaves — men  as  property — would  be  as 
certain  to  find  freedom  as  a  hungry  man  would  find  his 
dinner  in  a  well-filled  storehouse  or  a  bird  would  find  the 
leafy  shade  of  the  forest. 

Before  the  war  was  over,  the  careful  and  precise  leader, 
Calhoun,  had  seen  the  drift  that  the  war  and  its  acquisitions 
of  territory  would  lead  to.  He  contemplated  and  even  be- 
gan to  work  out  a  change  in  their  management;  but  he 
was  too  late.  He  attacked  President  Polk,  whom  he  had 
labored  so  long  and  so  zealously  to  nominate  and  elect.  He 
wanted  Texas,  but  did  not  want  the  "barren  extension  of 
mountains;"  but  his  party  had  drifted  too  far,  and  carried 
the  country  altogether  beyond  any  kind  of  retraction  or 
restriction  of  boundaries. 


296  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

The  grand,  open  sweep  of  territory  to  the  Pacific  Ocean, 
the  greatest  body  of  peaceful,  quiet-rolling  waters  under  the 
sun,  was  ours  beyond  reversal  by  the  slave -power  or  any 
one  else.  The  slave  extension  thitherward  w^as  beaten,  but 
its  projectors  sought  another  remedy.  If  they  could  not 
surround  freedom,  they  could  turn,  in  their  chagrin  and 
wrath,  and  gnaw  at  its  center,  and  extend  their  system 
along  the  rich  lands  of  the  Missouri  Valley,  or,  in  defeat  of 
that  purpose,  divide  the  Nation,  and  secede. 

In  this  way,  out  of  their  defeat  towards  the  Pacific, 
they  changed  their  plan  of  action,  as  might  be  said,  under 
fire,  and  made  their  last  desperate  assault  on  free  institu- 
tions and  free  States  and  free  labor  in  the  intense  work  of 
their  propaganda  to  plant  slavery  in  Kansas  and  Nebraska. 
In  the  contrarieties  and  superior  blundering  nothing  equaled 
that  of  arresting  General  Taylor  in  his  progress.  After  he 
had  won  a  great  victory — the  most  stubbornly-contested  and 
decisive  of  the  war,  fighting  with  untrained  troops,  with  five 
armed  Mexicans  against  every  one  he  had — he  was  still  not 
sustained  or  re-enforced,  as  was  to  be  expected.  Even  if 
General  Scott  should  move  the  main  army  against  the  capital, 
it  would  have  been  wise  to  re-enforce  Taylor  with  troops 
sufficient  to  sustain  him  in  a  campaign  that,  from  the  be- 
ginning, lacked  nothing  for  success  except  a  heavier  force. 
This  could  have  been  given  him  if  the  campaigns  had  been 
carried  on  expeditiously;  for  there  were  men  enough  in 
service  to  have  sent  each  of  them  a  force  of  twelve  thousand. 
Jealousy  was  a  pervading  passion  then,  and  shortened  men's 
wits  and  vision,  very  much  as  it  has  done  since,  verifying 
Solomon's  observation  that  "there  is  nothing  new  under 
the  sun,"  certainly  not  in  human  constitution  or  the  ambi- 
tion and  selfishness  of  generals  and  military  men  generally. 
Scott,  although  a  brave,  experienced,  and  capable  soldier, 
was  topheavy  in  his  vanities,  militarism,  tinsel,  lace,  and 
feathers.     His  plans  of  army   organization  and  discipline 


THE  MEN  OF  JUS  TIME.  297 

were  strictly  along  the  lines  of  caste,  with  all  the  goodness 
and  the  best  chances  at  the  top. 

General  Taylor  was  in  every  way  the  antithesis  of  this 
haughty,  gorgeous,  tactical  head  of  our  army.  He  was  a 
plain,  sensible  American,  brave,  alert,  and  active  in  his  line 
of  duty  all  the  time,  with  the  ''at-once"  faculty  in  action. 
He  was  a  man  at  home  with  his  men,  a  soldier  in  every 
sense,  well-named  "Kough-and-Eeady;"  for  in  the  West  hard 
frontier  and  Indian  campaigning  it  was  rough  if  it  was  any- 
thing, and  the  man  who  was  not  always  ready  would  soon 
pass  out  of  it  in  some  way.  He  was  a  soldier,  victor  in  war, 
with  nothing  of  Scott  or  Scottism  about  him.  Nevertheless 
the  people  believed  in  him,  if  Scott  and  his  tacticians  did 
not.  They  took  up  his  cause  as  their  own,  and  promoted 
him  to  be  President,  to  which  office  he  was  nominated  and 
elected  in  November,  1848,  and  inaugurated  March  4,  1849. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  a  greater  than  any  human 
power  was  leading  the  Republic,  using  the  passions  and  am- 
bitions of  men  to  their  path  or  destiny.  The  South,  by  its 
slave-extending  leaders,  inaugurated  the  war  to  project  their 
system  into  Texas,  and  acquire  that  territory,  with  its  re- 
sultant political  make-weights;  but  the  "Higher Power"  made 
the  Republic  the  generous  gift  of  more  free  territory  than  had 
been  planned  for  slavery,  with  the  further  gift  of  inexhaust- 
ible precious  ores,  that,  in  the  condition  of  things,  would 
aid  in  preserving  free  institutions,  and  prevent  the  spread 
of  slavery.  In  their  eager  zeal  for  extension,  the  leaders 
of  the  South  fired  the  mine  that  would  crumble  and  burn 
out  the  wrong  in  its  frightful  conflagration. 

After  helping  to  elect  Baker  and  Hardin,  Lincoln  held 
the  field  without  opposition,  and  was  elected  representative 
of  his  district  in  Congress,  November,  1846.  He  was  elected 
by  a  majoritv  of  1,511  against  Clay's  majority  in  the  dis- 
trict of  914  in  1844.  This  vote  shows  something  of  his 
wonderful  hold  on  the  people,  especially  when  we  rcmem- 


298  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

ber  that  the  war  was  in  progress,  that  people  in  all  parties 
sympathized  with  the  Texans  in  their  struggle,  and  that 
Lincoln,  as  a  candidate,  was  opposed  to  the  war.  In  ad- 
dition, Peter  Cartwright,  the  highly-esteemed  pioneer  reviv- 
alist of  the  West,  a  man  well  and  favorably  known  by  every 
person  in  the  district,  was  his  opponent. 

Cartwright  was  a  Methodist  preacher,  and  had  been  one 
from  his  boyhood.  He  came  to  Illinois  in  its  early  settle- 
ment, from  Tennessee  and  Kentucky,  He  was  then  about 
sixty  years  of  age,  in  full,  vigorous  manhood.  He  was  a 
famous  man,  and  lived  and  preached  until  over  eighty  years 
of  age.  He  was  a  great  power  for  good,  and  as  great  against 
evil,  and  so  popular  with  the  people  that  no  one  but  Lincoln 
could  have  defeated  him  in  that  Democratic  district. 

He  was  a  plain-spoken,  daring  man,  who  carried  con- 
viction to  the  hearts  of  the  people  in  the  commonest  and 
plainest  words  of  our  language,  in  which  he  showed  sense 
and  ability;  for  without  doubt  the  people  of  his  day,  not 
only  in  the  West,  but  all  over  the  Nation,  where  somewhat 
unlearned,  and  liked  plain  utterance.  An  unquestionable 
evidence  of  his  power  and  his  commanding  spirit  is  told  in 
the  fact  that  he  preached  and  ministered  to  the  same  people 
in  Central  Illinois  for  more  than  forty  years  with  increasing 
interest,  and  that  in  the  last  years  of  a  well-spent  life  he 
had  more  calls  upon  him  than  he  could  possibly  attend  to. 

He  was  an  eccentric,  rugged-spoken,  persevering,  and 
determined  man,  who  had  something  of  vanity  in  his  un- 
polished assaults  on  all  forms  of  wickedness,  and  was  so 
much  given  to  powerful  expressions,  unhesitating  exposures 
of  wrong  in  high  or  low  places,  and  so  accustomed  to  suc- 
cess, that  when  rowdies,  brawlers,  or  disturbers  of  the  peace 
interfered,  or  attempted  to  interfere,  in  the  progress  of  hi;? 
meetings,  which  they  attempted  a  few  times,  he  would  walk 
into  their  midst,  and  in  his  way  pound  sense  into  their  re- 
bellious souls.    He  would  lay  a  number  of  them  flat  on  their 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  299 

backs  by  the  use  of  his  tremendous  strength  and  muscular 
power,  and  then  reason  with  them  as  a  peace-and-order 
maker,  exhorting  them  to  amend  their  ways,  in  which  ca- 
pacity he  more  resembled  Lincoln  than  any  other  man  in 
the  district. 

Though  the  reverened  Peter  did  such  things  to  the  great 
good  and  orderly  well-being  of  his  people,  it  is  not  for  these 
that  he  chiefly  deserves  respectful  mention,  but  for  the 
greater  good  and  help  that  his  ceaseless  work  and  labor 
brought  to  increasing  thousands  every  year  of  his  long  and 
faithful  ministry.  He  was  a  helper  in  deed  and  in  fact  in 
the  cabins  and  dwellings  of  the  poor  and  lowly.  If  they 
were  needing  something  to  live  upon,  to  wear,  or  to  shelter 
themselves,  he  became  at  once  a  busy  man  until  their  wants 
were  supplied  as  far  as  it  was  in  his  power.  In  his  "circuit 
riding"  it  was  not  uncommon  for  this  good  disciple  to  take 
a  bag  of  cornmeal,  or  shoes,  or  clothing  to  some  distressed 
famil}^  and  leave  it  with  them,  with  the  prayers  that  had 
the  heart  of  the  man  in  them. 

It  is  pleasant  and  delightful  to  remember  the  rugged, 
kind,  holy  man,  who  was  always  doing  his  Master's  work, 
and  was  ready  for  a  hand-to-hand  fight  with  the  devil  any 
time.  His  work  was  heroic  and  daring,  and  remains  in  the 
bettered  people  and  happy  homes  of  the  thousands  in  the 
region  where  he  labored  so  faithfully,  and  so  to  other  thou- 
sands who  have  spread  over  the  West  and  followed  the  set- 
ting sun.  In  his  ministerial  life  of  almost  seventy  years, 
he  received  into  the  Church  and  baptized  over  twelve  thou- 
sand persons  and  delivered  over  fifteen  thousand  sermons, 
discourses,  and  addresses  so  well  and  effectively  that  the 
same  people  were  never  tired  of  hearing  him,  and  would 
have  willingly  listened  to  as  many  more  if  he  could  have 
preached  them.  There  could  be  no  possible  doubt  of  the 
character,  capacity,  and  ability  of  such  a  man. 

This  was  the  man  whom  the  Democrats  selected  to  run 


300  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

against  Lincoln  for  Congress.  Those  who  are  of  opinion 
that  either  of  them  had  an  easy  task  are  not  well  informed 
as  to  the  capacities  of  these  two  unequaled  orators  and  men, 
strong  with  the  people  because  they  were  of  them.  The  con- 
test appeared  so  close  from  the  beginning  that  they  were  not 
only  required  to  canvass  the  entire  district  and  make  ad- 
dresses in  almost  every  voting  precinct  in  the  several  coun- 
ties, but  both  of  them  being  personally  acquainted  with 
almost  every  voter  part  of  their  work  was  to  see  and  talk 
with  as  many  of  them  as  possible  in  every  neighborhood. 

Cartwright  was  a  Jackson  Democrat,  and  Lincoln  a  Whig. 
Each  took  the  close-voting  party  with  him,  but  there  was  a 
large  number  of  independent  voters  those  days.  Especially 
was  this  true  in  the  Springfield  district,  where  so  many 
Democrats  had  supported  Lincoln  in  the  capital  removal. 
These  independents  were  sought  out  and  reasoned  with,  by 
both  candidates  and  their  friends.  The  larger  body  of  them 
turned  to  Lincoln,  but  without  discredit  to  Cartwright,  fully 
believing  him  to  be  the  most  competent  and  suitable  man 
for  the  place. 

Governor  Reynolds,  the  sturdy  old  Democrat,  in  speak- 
ing of  the  contest  long  afterwards,  said:  "Lincoln's  election 
by  the  large  majority  he  received  was  the  finest  compliment 
personally  and  the  highest  political  indorsement  any  man 
could  expect,  and  such  as  T  have  never  seen  surpassed.  There 
were  hundreds  of  Democrats  supporting  Lincoln  who  were 
positively  in  favor  of  the  war,  and  knowing,  too,  that  he 
was  as  sincerely  opposed  to  it  and  more  pronounced  against 
it  than  any  man  in  the  State.  It  was  not  any  discredit  to 
Cartwright,  whose  standing  was  as  good  as,  or  better,  than 
before  his  defeat.  It  was  the  deliberate  opinion  of  the  great 
body  of  doubtful  voters  that  Lincoln  was  the  man  for  the 
place  at  the  time." 

Under  the  apportionment  following  the  census  of  1840, 
Illinois  became  entitled  to  a  member  of  Congress  at  large. 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  301 

Douglas  was  elected  to  this  place  first  in  1843  to  fill  a 
vacancy,  then  again  in  1844,  and  again  in  1846,  so  that  in 
the  latter  year  he  and  Mr.  Lincoln  were  elected  to  the  same 
Congress.  Before  taking  his  seat,  however,  in  that  Thirtieth 
Congress  he  was  elected  to  the  Senate  for  the  first  time, 
March  4,  1847,  which  office  he  held  continuously  until  his 
death  in  1861,  being  re-elected  in  1853,  and  again  after  the 
famous  campaign  with  Lincoln,  in  1859. 

The  course  of  these  men's  lives  ran  closely  together  for 
more  than  twenty-five  years.  In  the  whole  period  they  were 
political  adversaries.  If  there  were  nothing  more  than  coin- 
cidences in  their  continued  leadership  and  opposition,  it 
better  prepared  them  for  the  exercise  of  high  power  and 
influence  than  if  they  had  agreed  and  not  discussed  the 
greater  issues  of  the  time.  Their  earnest  disputes  fitted 
them  for  the  higher  and  better  knowledge  of  their  country 
and  its  civil  affairs.  In  all  matters  not  strictly  partisan  they 
were  united  from  their  first  acquaintance  at  Vandalia.  With 
this  respect  and  friendship  between  them,  and  Douglas  hav- 
ing had  almost  four  years'  acquaintance  with  men  of  all 
parties  at  Washington,  where  he  was  well  known  and  highly 
respected,  with  the  experience  that  the  work  had  given  him, 
he  was  able  to  be  of  infinite  value  to  Mr.  Lincoln,  a  new 
member,  Avhen  they  met  at  the  Capital  in  the  fall  of  1847. 

Judge  Douglas  did  in  this  all  and  more  than  Mr.  Lin- 
coln expected  of  him,  but  no  more  than  Lincoln  would  have 
done  for  him,  had  their  relations  been  reversed.  Douglas 
was  an  untiring,  energetic  man  in  all  the  work  of  his  life. 
Having  then  the  knowledge  and  the  opportunity,  he  busied 
himself  about  it,  and  in  a  few  weeks  gave  Lincoln  introduc- 
tion and  standing  at  the  Capital  with  men  and  leaders  of 
all  parties  at  once,  such  as  he  could  not  have  attained  with- 
out it  in  one  entire  Congress.  Lincoln  knew  of  and  appre- 
ciated this  advantage,  by  which  he  became  well-known  and 
one  of  the  most  prominent  members  at  the  beginning  of  his 


302  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

term,  in  part  by  reason  of  this  friendly  help  and  indorsement 
of  Douglas. 

By  this  and  his  own  capable  and  winning  ways  he  was 
soon  a  recognized  leader  on  his  side  of  the  House.  He  was 
placed  on  two  important  committees — on  Post  Eoads,  and 
Expenditures  of  the  War  Department.  The  last  was  the 
most  important,  because  of  the  large  amounts  carried  in 
the  appropriation  bills  for  the  prosecution  of  the  war  with 
Mexico,  then  in  progress.  Although  he  was  in  opposition, 
he  took  early  and  positive  part  in  favor  of  prompt  and  lib- 
eral support  of  our  armies  in  the  field.  He  believed  that 
however  questionable  the  war  was  in  the  beginning,  the 
necessities  of  our  volunteers  should  not  be  neglected, 
and  that  the  Administration  should  be  given  all  the  forces, 
means,  and  supplies  needed  to  bring  the  war  to  a  successful 
and  speedy  conclusion. 

On  the  assembling  of  the  Thirtieth  Congress,  in  Decem- 
ber, 1847,  it  was  soon  disclosed  that,  although  Polk  had  been 
elected  on  the  strength  of  his  annexation  policy  in  1844, 
the  opposition  had  carried  the  House  of  Representatives  by 
a  small  majority  in  1846.  Shortly  after  the  assembling, 
Eobert  C.  Winthrop,  a  Massachusetts  Whig,  was  elected 
Speaker.  Polk's  policy  of  provoking  hostilities  by  advanc- 
ing into  Mexican  territory  was  not  sustained  in  the  North, 
and  as  related,  the  slave-leaders,  seeing  the  scope  of  Mexican 
territory  that  was  about  to  be  taken,  without  serious  objec- 
tion of  Mexico,  along  with  Texas,  in  their  dilemma  and 
confusion  were  the  first  to  call  a  halt  and  blame  Polk,  who 
they  held  should  have  pursued  a  defensive  policy,  which 
would  have  held  Texas,  and  that  alone. 

Shortly  after  organization,  the  House  passed  a  resolu- 
tion offered  by  George  Ashmun,  a  Wliig  member  from  Massa- 
chusetts, by  more  than  a  party  majority,  declaring  that 
"The  war  had  been  unnecessarily  and  unconstitutionally 
begun  by  the  President,"  which  was  the  severest  reprimand 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  303 

ever  administered  to  any  President  by  either  House  of  Con- 
gress up  to  that  time.  This  was  done  without  much  oppo- 
sition by  those  who  did  not  vote  the  censure,  because  Polk 
had  claimed  that  the  former  Congress  had  virtually  indorsed 
his  action,  in  permitting  the  passage  of  an  amendment  to  an 
appropriation  bill,  which  declared,  "That  war  exists  by  the 
act  of  Mexico."  It  was  a  serious  mistake  for  Congress  to 
allow  the  passage  of  such  a  declaration.  The  appropriation 
bill  was  caught  in  the  closing  hours  of  Congress,  when  this 
rider  was  put  on  it  and  carried  through,  because  there  was 
not  time  to  separate  the  stump  speech  resolution  in  due  par- 
liamentary fashion  and  defeat  it. 

It  had  to  be  suffered  on  the  appropriation  because  the 
pay  of  the  armies  in  the  field  would  be  delayed  unless  agreed 
to,  and  passed  in  the  closing  hours  of  the  session.  This 
was  all  planned  by  Polk's  Administration  and  the  slave 
coterie,  when  in  consequence  of  this  hostile  act  the  war 
was  inaugurated  by  our  invasion  of  the  Eio  Grande  territory. 
The  Texans  had  never  claimed  boundary  farther  west  than 
the  Neuces  Eiver,  as  much  as  one  hundred  miles  east  of  the 
Eio  Grande.  Under  such  circumstances  the  resolution  of 
censure  passed  the  House  of  Eepresentatives.  Mr.  Lincoln 
earnestly  supported  the  resolution. 

Before  the  close  of  the  session,  in  the  midst  of  dodging 
statesmen,  sophistries,  and  pretensions  in  every  form  of 
speech  and  address  at  the  Capital  and  throughout  the  land, 
by  reflections  of  catechising  constituents  he  was  wrought 
up  to  the  work  of  making  one  of  his  most  fearless  and  com- 
pact statements  concerning  the  war.  It  was  a  model  of 
forceful  expression,  perfect  knowledge  of  his  subject,  can- 
did relation  and  the  independence  of  the  man,  who  was 
never  in  the  middle,  but  on  one  side  or  other  of  every  public 
question.     He  said: 

"As  General  Taylor  is  par  excellence  the  hero  of  the 
Mexican  War,  and  as  you  Democrats  say  the  Whigs  have 


304  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

always  opposed  the  war,  we  think  it  must  be  very  awkward 
and  embarrassing  for  us  to  go  for  General  Taylor,  The 
declaration  that  we  have  always  opposed  the  war  is  true  or 
false  accordingly  as  one  may  understand  the  terms,  'oppos- 
ing the  war.'  If  to  say  'the  war  was  unnecessary  and  un- 
constitutionally begun  by  the  President'  be  opposing  the 
war,  then'the  Whigs  have  very  generally  opposed  it.  When- 
ever they  have  spoken  at  all  they  have  said  this,  and  they 
have  said  it  on  what  appeared  good  reason  to  them;  the 
marching  of  an  army  into  a  peaceful  Mexican  settlement, 
frightening  the  inhabitants  away  and  leaving  their  growing 
crops  and  other  property  to  destruction,  to  you  may  appear 
a  perfectly  amicable,  peaceful,  unprovoking  procedure;  but 
it  does  not  appear  so  to  us.  To  call  such  an  act  peaceful, 
to  us  appears  no  other  than  a  naked,  impudent  absurdity, 
and  we  speak  of  it  accordingly.  But  if,  when  the  war  had 
begun  and  had  become  the  cause  of  the  country,  the  giving 
of  our  money  and  blood  in  common  with  yours  was  support 
of  the  war,  then  it  is  not  true  that  we  have  always  opposed 
the  war. 

"With  few  individual  exceptions  you  have  constantly  had 
our  votes  here  for  all  the  necessary  supplies.  And  more 
than  this,  you  have  had  the  services,  the  blood,  and  the 
lives  of  our  political  brethren  on  every  field.  The  beardless 
boy  and  the  mature  man,  the  humble  and  the  distinguished, 
you  have  had  them.  Through  suffering  and  death,  by  disease 
and  in  battle,  they  have  endured  and  fought  and  fallen  with 
you.  Clay  and  Webster  each  gave  a  son,  never  to  be  re- 
turned. 

"From  the  State  of  my  own  residence,  besides  other 
worthy  but  less  known  Whig  names,  we  sent  Marshall,  Mor- 
rison, Baker,  and  Hardin.  They  all  fought  and  one  fell, 
and  in  the  fall  of  that  one  we  lost  our  best  Whig  man.  E"or 
were  the  Whigs  few  in  number  or  laggard  in  the  day  of 
battle.    In  that  fearful,  bloody,  breathless  struggle  at  Buena 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  305 

Vista,  where  each  man's  hard  task  was  to  beat  back  five  foes 
or  die  himself,  of  the  five  high  officers  who  perished,  four 
were  Whigs." 

Later,  as  he  became  more  familiar  with  the  course  of 
business  and  the  rules  of  conducting  debate,  he  introduced 
a  series  of  resolutions  on  the  subject  of  the  war,  its  cause 
and  beginning,  at  which  time  he  delivered  one  of  the  clearest 
and  most  forcible  addresses  ever  made  on  the  subject  of  the 
Mexican  War. 

The  resolutions  were: 

"Resolved  by  the  House  of  Eepresentatives,  That  the 
President  of  the  United  States  be  respectfully  requested  to 
inform  this  House, 

"First,  Whether  the  spot  on  which  the  blood  of  our  citi- 
zens was  shed,  as  in  his  message  declared,  was  or  was  not 
■w-ithin  the  territory  of  Spain,  at  least  after  the  treaty  of 
1819  until  the  Mexican  revolution. 

"Second,  Whether  that  spot  is  or  is  not  within  the  terri- 
tory which  was  wrested  from  Spain  by  the  revolutionary 
Government  of  Mexico. 

"Third,  Whether  that  spot  is  not  within  a  settlement  of 
people,  which  settlement  has  existed  ever  since  long  before 
the  Texas  revolution,  and  until  its  inhabitants  fled  before 
the  approach  of  the  United  States  army. 

"Fourth,  Whether  that  settlement  is  not  isolated  from 
any  and  all  other  settlements  by  the  Gulf  and  the  Rio  Grande 
on  the  south  and  west,  and  by  wide,  uninhabited  regions  in 
the  north  and  east. 

"Fifth,  Whether  the  people  of  that  settlement,  or  a  ma- 
jority of  them,  or  any  of  them,  have  ever  submitted  them- 
selves to  the  Government  or  laws  of  Texas  or  of  the  United 
States,  by  consent  or  by  compulsion,  either  by  accepting 
office  or  voting  at  elections,  or  paying  taxes,  or  serving  on 
juries,  or  having  process  served  upon  them,  or  in  any  other 
way. 

20 


306  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

"Sixth,  Whether  the  people  of  that  settlement  did  or  did 
not  flee  from  the  approach  of  the  United  States  army,  leav- 
ing unprotected  their  homes  and  growing  crops,  before  the 
blood  was  shed  as  in  the  messages  stated,  and  whether  the 
first  blood  so  shed  was,  or  was  not,  shed  within  the  inclosure 
of  one  of  the  people  who  had  thus  fled  from  it. 

"Seventh,  Whether  our  citizens  whose  blood  was  shed, 
as  in  his  message  declared,  were  or  were  not  at  that  time 
armed  officers  and  soldiers  sent  into  that  settlement  by  the 
military  order  of  the  President  through  the  Secretary  of 
War. 

"Eighth,  Whether  the  military  force  of  the  United 
States  was,  or  was  not  so  sent  into  that  settlement  after 
General  Taylor  had  more  than  once  intimated  to  the  War 
Department,  that  in  his  opinion  no  such  movement  was 
necessary  for  the  defense  or  the  protection  of  Texas." 

In  these  allegations  and  the  inquiries  and  the  short 
speech  which  he  made  in  the  House  not  long  before,  we 
have  a  compact  and  concise  account  of  the  manner  in  which 
the  war  was  begun,  and  the  relation  of  parties  and  individ- 
uals to  it.  The  last  inquiries,  it  will  be  observed,  are  drawn 
up  with  all  the  care  of  comprehensive  inquisition  as  to 
boundaries,  dates,  course,  and  character  of  action,  forces, 
and  their  action,  and  individuals  and  their  action,  and  all 
facts  and  circumstances  such  as  would  underlie  the  forward 
movement  in  any  well-laid  cause  in  court  or  council  or  a 
statesman's  exact  definition  of  it.  In  this  can  be  seen  the 
manner  and  habit  of  the  man  in  the  control  and  conduct  of 
any  cause  or  subject  under  his  direction.  When  his  cause 
was  made  up,  no  material  fact  or  statement  was  lacking, 
neither  was  there  surplusage  or  attempt  at  concealment  or 
mystification. 

The  statements  were  as  plain  and  simple  as  the  plainest 
language  in  common  use  would  make  them.  All  the  facts 
bearing  on  the  subject  or  any  phase  of  it  were  always  care- 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  307 

fully  related,  those  bearing  against  him  or  his  cause  being 
as  fairly  given  as  those  in  his  favor.  Hence  he  became 
known  as  an  honest,  tireless  pleader  at  the  bar,  who  did  not 
desire  the  care  and  management  of  actions  or  suits  at  law 
where  the  rights  of  his  clients  or  the  righteousness  of  his 
cause  rested  on  any  sort  of  doubt,  nor  was  he  ever  known 
in  his  political  or  public  career  to  undertake  the  defense  or 
support  of  any  principle,  benefit,  or  line  of  action  that  was 
not  based  upon  absolute  right  and  justice  as  he  understood  it. 

Notwithstanding  his  favorable  introduction  and  approved 
leadership  in  his  party,  and  his  rapid  and  unusual  advance- 
ment to  recognition  and  conceded  leadership  on  the  floor 
of  the  House,  he  was  unsatisfied  with  his  position  as  a  rep- 
resentative long  before  his  term  had  expired.  There  were 
several  reasons  that  led  him  to  this  conclusion ;  a  preponder- 
ating one  was  that  the  pay  and  emoluments  were  wholly  in- 
adequate for  the  support  of  a  man  in  his  condition  and 
circumstances  of  life.  The  pay  of  a  representative  was  eight 
dollars  a  day,  a  sum  which  was  very  little  above  what  was 
needed  for  board-bill  and  other  necessary  expenses  at  the 
Capital. 

There  was  a  time  not  long  after  the  opening  of  his  first 
session  when  he  would  have  consented  to  a  renomination. 
Writing  to  his  partner,  Mr.  Herndon,  about  it,  he  said:  "It 
is  very  pleasant  for  me  to  learn  from  you  that  there  are  some 
who  desire  that  I  should  be  re-elected.  I  most  heartily  thank 
you  for  their  kind  partiality;  and  I  can  say,  as  Mr.  Clay  said 
of  the  annexation  of  Texas,  that  I  would  not  object  to  a 
re-election,  although  I  thought  at  the  time  of  my  nomina- 
tion, and  still  think,  it  would  be  quite  as  well  for  me  to 
return  to  the  law  at  the  end  of  a  single  term.  I  made  the 
declaration  that  I  would  not  be  a  candidate  again  more 
from  a  wish  to  deal  fairly  with  others,  to  keep  peace  among 
our  friends,  and  keep  the  district  from  going  to  the  Demo- 
crats, than  for  any  cause  personal  to  myself;  so  that  if  it 


308  ABBAHAM  LINCOLN. 

should  so  happen  that  nobody  else  wishes  to  he  elected,  I 
could  not  refuse  the  people  the  right  of  sending  me  again; 
but  to  enter  myself  a  competitor  of  others,  or  authorize  any 
one  so  to  enter  me,  is  what  my  word  and  honor  forbid." 

This  was  his  most  favorable  consideration  of  the  subject; 
but  long  before  the  end  of  his  term  he  had  given  up  all 
thought  of  re-election,  and  heartily  united  with  others  in 
making  Judge  Logan  the  candidate,  who  was  defeated,  a 
result  which  Lincoln  regretted  as  much  as,  if  not  more  than, 
Logan.  Lincoln  might  have  carried  his  district  again,  but 
it  was  then  a  close  one,  and  a  great  many  Whigs  and  a  larger 
number  of  independent  Democrats  who  had  supported  him 
were  criticising  him  or  any  Wliig  who  questioned  the  con- 
duct of  the  war  or  the  acquisition  of  the  large  territory 
quite  severely,  which  even  his  Whig  law  partner,  Mr.  Hern- 
don,  did. 

The  war  had  become  popular,  and  it  was  only  Whigs 
with  a  record  of  military  service  who  possessed  availability 
as  candidates.  In  this  condition  of  political  feeling  it  was 
well  that  Lincoln  was  not  a  candidate.  The  one  considera- 
tion that  would  have  induced  him  to  undertake  it  would 
have  been  the  belief  that  no  other  Whig  could  be  elected 
in  the  district.  Although  Taylor  was  elected  in  1848,  the 
State  of  Illinois  was  becoming  more  surely  Democratic, 
owing,  no  doubt,  to  the  large  number  of  emigrants  it  was 
receiving  from  Tennessee  and  Kentucky,  the  most  of  whom 
were  less  opposed  to  slavery  than  those  they  denounced  as 
Abolitionists  in  all  parties.  It  was  no  particular  disappoint- 
ment to  Logan  that  he  was  defeated;  but  if  it  had  hap- 
pened to  Mr.  Lincoln  it  might  have  changed  the  whole 
course  of  his  life,  and  it  was  not  to  be. 

His  mind  was  pretty  well  made  up  on  the  subject  early 
in  the  term,  when  he  wrote  Mr.  Speed  that  "Being  elected 
to  Congress,  though  I  am  very  grateful  to  our  friends  for 
having  done  it,  has  not  pleased  me  as  much  as  I  expected." 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  309 

This  was  his  real  feeling  from  the  beginning  to  the  end  of 
the  term.  His  own  conclusions  seemed  to  have  been  always 
right  as  to  his  conduct  and  occupation.  In  this  he  was 
particularly  right,  with  the  future  before  him,  which  neither 
himself  nor  any  one  about  him  realized  in  any  sense.  What 
it  would  be  in  comparison  with  what  it  proved  to  be,  it 
would  have  been  an  irremediable  mistake  in  many  ways 
for  him  to  have  remained  in  Congress,  which,  so  far  as  the 
nomination  ^vas  concerned,  he  could  easily  have  accom- 
plished. 

Much  likely  would  have  occurred  to  distract  and  remove 
him  far  away  from  the  field  where  his  herculean  labor  was 
a  necessity,  to  build  the  coming  party  that  would  tackle 
slavery  without  fear  or  reserve.  Above  all,  for  the  career 
that  was  before  him,  did  he  need  the  six  years  for  thought, 
the  closest  study  and  application  of  his  life,  to  fit  him  for 
the  more  than  human  undertaking  that  lay  before  him, 
and  which  he  seemed  to  be  preparing  himself  for  in  every 
way  that  he  could,  guided  either  by  a  deep,  instinctive  feel- 
ing, or  inspiration. 

As  early  as  July,  1848,  Lincoln  gave  up  all  hope  of 
seeing  his  favorite  leader,  Henr}^  Clay,  elected  President, 
though  a  great  many  Whigs  were  so  firmly  held  to  him 
by  his  amiable,  gracious  ways  and  his  wonderful  capacities 
to  lead,  that  he  received  over  one-third  of  the  votes  in 
the  Convention  which  nominated  General  Taylor  for  Presi- 
dent, and  Millard  Fillmore,  a  lawyer,  of  Buffalo,  New  York, 
for  Vice-President. 

Before  the  long  session  of  Congress  was  over,  Lincoln 
had  indulged  in  some  of  the  speech-making  in  the  House, 
and  had  arraigned  the  Democratic  party  on  its  war  policy 
and  its  record,  which  had  provoked  hostilities  wantonly 
and  without  cause.  When  the  war  was  over,  they  claimed 
the  credit  of  its  great  success  and  the  valuable  acquisition 
of  territory  as  due  to  them  alone.    This  was  presumptuous 


310  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN.      . 

beyond  measure,  when  truthfully  considered;  for,  as  be- 
fore remarked,  Scott  and  Taylor,  the  successful  captains, 
were  Whigs;  no  prominent  Democrats  had  been  con- 
spicuous as  leaders;  and  of  the  volunteer  officers  and  sol- 
diers, thousands  of  them — perhaps  more  than  half — were 
Whigs. 

It  was  in  bad  taste,  as  it  always  has  been,  to  set  up  any 
line  of  party  division  in  our  volunteer  armies;  for  when 
any  war  becomes  the  cause  of  the  people,  which  the  Mex- 
ican War  did,  party  divisions  are  set  aside  at  once.  The 
American  people  make  it  the  cause  of  the  Nation,  as  people 
have  done  the  world  over;  and  the  party  claiming  exclusive 
right  to  patriotic  service  and  the  only  "loyal  belief"  is  usu- 
ally severely  punished  or  neglected  for  its  impertinent  pre- 
tensions. 


CHAPTER  XIV. 

ME.  LINCOLN  had  grown  to  be  not  only  an  able  de- 
bater in  courts  and  Congress  in  1848,  but  one  of  the 
most  entertaining  speakers  in  the  country.  In  proof 
of  this  there  were  two  or  three  places  wanting  him  in  his 
own  State  for  every  one  he  could  fill  because  of  his  con- 
spicuous reputation  as  one  of  the  most  effective  and  pleas- 
ing orators  in  the  House.  He  accepted  the  invitation  for 
a  two-weeks'  canvass  of  New  England  before  returning  home 
after  the  adjournment;  consequently,  in  September,  he 
made  several  addresses  in  Boston,  Worcester,  Hartford,  New 
Haven,  Providence,  Dorchester,  Springfield,  and,  on  his  way 
home,  at  Albany,  New  York,  where  he  met  Thurlow  Weed 
for  the  first  time. 

His  audiences  were  delighted  with  him.  In  that  coun- 
try with  just  claims  to  high  cultivation  and  education,  and 
full  of  able  and  eminent  men,  from  Webster  down  to  Franklin 
Pierce,  he  held  his  high  distinction  as  one  of  the  clearest  and 
most  convincing  speakers  and  reasoners  they  had  ever  heard. 
There  was  not  a  single  town  in  which  he  spoke  that  would 
not  have  doubled  his  audience  for  a  second  speech;  and 
not  a  single  complaint  about  want  of  knowledge,  learning, 
or  force  was  ever  heard. 

This  is  mentioned  here  because,  later  in  life,  there  came 
men  and  journals  out  of  this  same  New  England  who  af- 
fected to  speak  or  write  of  him  as  a  backwoods  lawyer  and 
an  unlettered  man,  whereas,  in  the  day  when  they  had 
real  statesmen  in  their  section,  Lincoln  was  held  to  be 
their  peer,  and  proved  it  on  their  native  heath.     Lincoln 

311 


312  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN, 

had  plain  ideas  and  beliefs  about  the  rights  of  men  and 
sincere  sympathy  for  the  oppressed  in  every  condition  of 
life,  snch  as  New  England  and  caste-ridden  and  college- 
trained  England  is  endeavoring  to  wash  out  of  the  memory 
of  men,  so  as  to  stuff  the  minds  of  their  factory-cursed 
operatives  with  the  benefits  of  usury,  property,  investment, 
business,  commerce,  and  gold  as  of  more  value  than  any 
mere  right  of  man. 

Mr.  Lincoln,  in  his  lifetime,  did  not  need,  nor  ever  de- 
sired such  to  support  or  believe  in  him,  nor  their  commis- 
eration; but  those  who  affect  to  regret  his  untutored  mind 
are  scarcely  in  such  pitiable  plight  as  the  wealth  and  class- 
breeding  projectors  who  devoutly  assume  to  honor  and  fol- 
low him,  while  planting,  building,  and  fastening  all  the 
diabolical,  labor-robbing,  and  oppressing  systems  of  Europe 
upon  us. 

It  is  common  knowledge  that  in  life  at  home,  in  courts. 
Congress,  councils,  or  the  highest  exercise  of  power  ever 
permitted  in  the  land,  he  was  invariably  on  the  side  of 
the  "common  people"  and  the  plainest,  poorest,  and  most 
oppressed  among  them.  If  now  living,  he  would  not  be 
boasting  the  great  achievements  and  aggregations  of  cap- 
ital, but  would  be  in  line  alongside  the  toiler,  as  he  was 
on  the  side  of  the  slave  and  the  struggling  j^ioneer. 

The  annexation  of  Texas  and  the  purchase  and  cession 
of  the  territory  heretofore  described  reopened  the  slavery 
question  more  emphatically  and  with  more  determination 
-on  the  part  of  contending  partisans  of  slavery  and  freedom 
than  any  event  in  our  history.  Both  parties  had  strong 
convictions,  and  when  the  proposition  was  made  to  author- 
ize the  President  to  use  a  large  sum  of  money  virtually  for 
the  purpose  of  acquiring  the  territory,  the  contest  opened 
which  would  only  end  in  the  positive  triumph  and  unques- 
tionable victory  of  one  or  the  other. 

The  organized  slave  power  of  the   South,  then  under 


TEE  2LEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  313 

Calhoun,  in  his  age,  and  the  organizing  bodies  of  anti-slav- 
ery people  in  the  North  in  various  degrees  of  unity,  coher- 
ence, and  purposes,  entered  fearlessly  into  the  discussion 
of  all  questions,  and  especially  then  into  one  so  public,  wide- 
spreading  and  ruinous  to  our  institutions  as  slavery. 

When  the  appropriation  of  two  million  dollars  for  the 
purpose  of  territorial  expansion  was  agreed  to  in  the  House 
of  Eepresentatives  on  August  8,  1846,  David  Wilmot,  a 
sturdy  Democrat,  of  Pennsylvania,  offered  an  amendment, 
in  the  form  of  a  proviso,  that  neither  slavery  nor  involun- 
tary servitude  should  be  permitted  in  *any  of  the  territory 
so  acquired.  This  was  agreed  to,  and  the  resolution  was 
passed,  with  this  condition  annexed.  In  the  Senate  the 
appropriation  was  taken  up  in  the  closing  hours  of  the 
session,  and  defeated  in  discussion,  without  coming  to  a 
vote. 

This  discussion  opened  the  whole  question,  which  was 
taken  up  slowly  in  the  beginning,  but  gathering  strength 
year  after  year,  until,  1854-55-56,  it  took  definite  form  in 
the  organization  of  the  Republican  party  on  the  basis  of 
the  Wilmot  proviso,  and  determined  resistance  to  the  spread 
of  slavery  into  any  new  territory.  The  actual  dispute  was 
renewed  in  the  next  Congress,  after  Taylor's  election,  when 
ten  millions  were  appropriated  and  used  for  the  purchase 
of  the  territory,  without  the  restrictive  clause.  The  Whigs 
had  elected  General  Taylor.  Nevertheless  the  party  was 
nearing  dissolution  because  of  its  want  of  integrity  to  ad- 
here to  its  long-professed  antagonism  to  slavery. 

Those  controlling  the  Administration,  who,  above  all 
other  things,  desired  to  avoid  a  division  on  the  question, 
discovered  that  the  Mexican  people,  more  advanced  than 
our  own  Republic  at  the  time,  much  as  we  believed  in  our 
superior  civilization,  had  abolished  slavery  in  every  part 
of  their  territory;  consequently  our  acquisition  from  them 
was  free  territory,  and  would  require  the  passage  of  some 


314  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

positive  act  to  make  any  part  of  it  a  slave  State  or  Terri- 
tory. 

This  was  the  solution  at  the  time.  It  was  in  no  way  a 
settlement,  but  was  merely  a  delay  of  the  coming  conflict. 
Mr.  Lincoln  earnestly  supported  the  proviso,  and  as  he 
never  hesitated  about  his  beliefs  or  declaring  them,  he  an- 
nounced himself  as  positively  opposed  to  the  extension  of 
slavery  into  any  new  territory,  which  had  virtually  been 
his  position  on  the  annexation  of  Texas. 

He  not  only  declared  himself  opposed  to  any  form  of 
extension,  but  took  up  the  question  of  slavery  and  the 
slave-trade  in  the  District  of  Columbia  in  a  practical  way. 
His  plan  was  to  accomplish  the  abolition  of  slavery  in  the 
District  and  the  arrest  of  the  inhuman  traffic  by  the  agree- 
ment of  all  parties  concerned,  awarding  a  reasonable  com- 
pensation to  the  slaveholders  for  the  men  and  women 
manumitted  under  the  plan.  It  was  his  opinion  that  Con- 
gress had  full  and  undisputed  authority  over  the  District 
and  the  Territories.  Therefore,  being  a  representative,  with 
rights  and  authority  equal  to  any  one,  he  set  about  devising 
a  plan,  in  earnest  to  carry  out  his  belief  that  slavery  was 
wrong,  and  to  provide  a  system  of  legislation  for  its  extinc- 
tion wherever  the  United  States  held  undisputed  authority, 
outside  of  State  control. 

He  was  not  led  to  this  solution  as  a  sudden  or  partial 
conclusion.  He  learned  that  the  slaveholders  held  from 
the  beginning  that  slavery  was  an  inherited  condition,  and 
that  the  ownership  of  men  and  women  had  been  so  long 
recognized  as  part  of  our  civil  and  social  fabric,  and  so 
interwoven  in  its  relations  to  property,  industries,  and  val- 
ues as  to  be  entirely  beyond  their  control,  except  the  right 
to  liberate  their  own  slaves  in  some  States  of  the  South. 
Beyond  this  the  common  belief  was  that  thousands  oi  able 
and  wise  men  in  the  slave  States,  slaveholders,  but,  above 
all,  patriots,  many  of  whom  had  given  their  lives  to  our 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  315 

country  as  proof  of  it,  were  hoping  that  some  system  of 
wise  and  gradual  emancipation  would  finally  be  adopted. 

The  idea  prevailed  so  generally  up  to  the  admission  of 
Missouri  that  it  was  believed  to  be  the  accepted  solution, 
and  that,  in  some  way,  a  legislative  plan  would  be  agreed 
on  that  would  effect  emancipation,  with  limited  compen- 
sation to  the  owners  in  money  or  lands.  This  was  the  plan 
of  the  framers  of  the  Constitution — Washington,  Jefferson, 
Madison,  Hamilton,  and  thousands  like  them — many  of  whom 
did  as  some  of  these  did,  who  freed  their  slaves.  It  was 
Clay's  belief  and  the  avowed  belief  of  the  framers  of  the 
Kentucky  Constitution — the  first  State  admitted — and  up 
to  1820  it  was  the  avowed  belief  of  the  Whig  party,  with 
no  declared  opposition  to  it  in  any  other  party.  Continued 
examples  of  the  sincerity  of  the  belief  were  frequently  af- 
forded, as  thousands  of  slaves  were  manumitted. 

Thus,  after  a  laborious  study  for  almost  his  full  terra 
in  Congress  and  patient  consideration  of  the  subject  as  he 
believed  it  to  be  his  right  and  duty,  Mr.  Lincoln  deliberately 
planned  to  put  in  force  his  own  belief  in  the  most  sensible 
way  that  had  been  suggested.  In  full  accord  with  the  beliefs 
of  the  wisest  and  best  of  citizens,  soldiers,  and  statesmen 
who  framed  our  institutions  and  system  of  law,  he  took  hold 
of  the  slave  question  at  his  first  opportunity.  Let  this  be 
remembered,  that,  to  put  the  plan  in  successful  operation 
and  preserve  a  consistent  policy  in  accord  with  professed 
beliefs,  he  presented  it,  through  Colonel  W.  W.  Seaton, 
mayor  of  Washington  City,  to  the  slaveholders  of  the  Dis- 
trict. They,  in  the  beginning,  looked  upon  it  favorably, 
and  agreed  on  the  details  providing  for  proper  time-limits, 
manumission,  and  compensation.  He  proceeded  so  far  as 
to  move  in  the  House,  on  several  days — January  8,  9,  and 
11,  1849 — to  take  up  the  resolution  of  Mr.  Gott,  of  Ohio, 
prohibiting  the  slave-trade  in  the  District,  at  the  same  time 
offering  his  plan  for  the  abolition  of  slavery  in  the  District 


316  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

as  an  amendment.  This  he  did,  and  for  the  time  it  was 
as  far  as  any  real  slavery-extinguisher  could  get  in  our 
land  of  freedom.  Thousands  had  for  years  believed,  and 
other  thousands  had  affected  to  believe,  that  such  a  plan 
for  the  extinction  of  slavery  should  be  agreed  on  and 
passed,  when  came  Lincoln  with  a  formulated  agreement  in 
which  former  beliefs  and  asseverations  could  be  put  to 
the  test. 

Very  much  to  Mr.  Lincoln's  enlightenment,  and  to  that 
of  other  thousands  of  anti-slavery  people,  he  learned  that 
the  "right  of  petition,"  which  John  Quincy  Adams  had  so 
valiantly  fought  for  in  that  House  for  so  many  years,  was 
about  all  that  was  then  left  of  remedy  against  slavery,  and 
that  when  the  petitions  of  the  people  were  read  and  re- 
ferred, that  was  all  that  was  looked  for  or  expected,  and 
that  no  considerable  number  of  persons  in  or  about  Congress 
ever  expected  that  any  legislation  restricting  slavery  would 
pass  or  seriousl}^  interfere  with  the  spread  of  as  prosper- 
ous and  profitable  an  institution  as  it  was  then  held  to  be 
in  our  Capital  City. 

If  Lincoln  had  gained  no  greater  knowledge  than  this, 
it  would  have  rewarded  him  for  all  his  waiting  and  toil 
in  getting  to  Congress,  and  all  his  inquiring  and  persevering 
energy  in  this  endeavor  to  get  the  subject  in  condition  for 
a  practical  settlement.  Early  in  life  he  believed  in  and 
followed  Mr.  Clay  in  hope  of  the  adoption  of  some  plan 
of  gradual  emancipation.  After  careful  and  patient  in- 
vestigation and  putting  in  shape  what  had  been  so  often 
and  so  generally  agreed  to  and  proposed,  he  was  turned 
away  with  careless  indifference  by  Mayor  Seaton  and  his 
associates,  who  had  been  ridiculed  by  the  pro-slavery  people 
and  admonished  that  their  city  would  suffer  and  that  Wash- 
ington society  would  languish  and  decay  if  they  attempted 
"any  interference  with  the  domestic  institutions  of  the 
South."    However,  he  experienced  an  ease  of  mind  and  re- 


THE  MUN  OF  HIS  TIME.  317 

lief  when  his  well-meant  proposal  met  such  unceremonious 
rejection.  His  work  revealed  to  him  the  true  situation, 
the  strength  of  the  slave-power,  and  the  value  of  Phari- 
saical promises  by  the  thousand,  delivered  on  so  many  cor- 
ners and  other  public  places.  He  often  told  the  writer  that 
the  experience  was  of  great  value  to  him,  and  that  the  move- 
ment against  slavery,  as  is  the  case  with  all  other  wrongs 
which  men  endure,  would  need  to  begin  and  be  carried  on 
by  the  people  directly  with  all  their  power  and  strength, 
and  that  reforms  seldom,  if  ever,  begin  with  men  high  in 
authority. 

In  talking  it  over  afterwards,  he  said  that  he  felt  very 
much  as  John  A.  Logan  did  on  his  return  from  a  peace 
convention  at  Eichmond  in  the  spring  of  1861,  when  it 
was  known  they  were  mustering  troops  for  resistance  in 
the  same  town.  Logan  was  young  and  ambitious,  and  wanted 
to  make  "a  last  effort  anyway."  It  was  understood  he  had 
offered  them,  as  a  Northern  Democrat  who  very  much  de- 
sired peace,  a  sheet  of  clear  white  paper  on  which  to  write 
their  terms  and  the  conditions  on  which  they  would  consent 
to  a  peaceful  adjustment  of  the  dispute,  and  remain  in  the 
Union. 

It  was  known  in  Washington  before  Logan's  return  that 
he  had  submitted  this  proposition  in  this  way  to  the  real 
leaders  of  the  secession  movement.  Their  reply  had  not 
been  given  before  Logan  got  back.  When  he  returned,  an 
anxious  friend  asked  him,  "What  was  the  result  of  your 
proposal?"  With  light,  almost  a  flame,  flashing  from  daz- 
zling eyes  that  never  shone  brighter  in  all  the  halos  of  their 
glory,  the  answer  was  explosive  and  startling  as  it  rang  out 
in  the  assembling  House  of  Eepresentatives  and  the  lob- 
bies to  the  hundreds  of  anxious  listeners,  who  hoped  much 
from  his  visit:  "Well  I  've  brought  my  blank  sheet  of  paper, 
and  I  am  ready  for  war!" 

The  compensatory  plan  was  withdrawn,  the  mayor  and 


318  ABB  AH  AM  LINCOLN. 

his  beguiled  associates  were  reprimanded  and  ordered  to 
let  the  subject  of  slaver}^  alone.  The  episode  opened  the 
eyes  of  the  man  who  was  some  day  to  write  the  audacious 
wrong  and  injustice  out  of  existence.  There  was  revealed 
to  him  the  strength,  the  complete,  compact,  and  almost 
perfect  organization,  the  force  at  command,  the  accessibility 
to  knowledge  and  power,  and  the  capacity  of  trained  lead- 
ers under  one  single  authoritj^  Calhoun,  as  long  as  he  lived, 
and  under  Davis  in  succession. 

In  gaining  this  information  and  experience,  and  pass- 
ing through  daily  repeated  proof  of  what  he  had  thus  dis- 
covered, he  came  into  the  fullest  possession  of  the  knowl- 
edge of  the  facts,  and  made  the  personal  acquaintance  and 
estimate  of  the  men  who  held  absolute  control  and  manage- 
ment of  the  entire  subject  and  system.  These  to  a  man  of 
Lincoln's  keen  perception  and  perfect  understanding  gave 
him  the  light  and  knowledge  of  the  subject  and  of  the  char- 
acter and  capacities  of  those  in  control,  such  as  could  not  have 
been  gained  by  him  in  any  other  way.  He  saw  the  knowl- 
edge, training,  and  devotion  of  these  leaders,  and  realized 
what  was  necessary  for  him  or  any  other  leader  who  con- 
tended against  them.  These  were  a  fitting  preparation  for 
his  coming  work,  without  which  he  could  not  have  suc- 
ceeded^ and  such  as  came  to  no  other  man  or  leader. 

There  were  a  hundred  or  more  men  in  the  Thirtieth 
Congress  along  with  him  who  were  to  become  jxistly  hon- 
ored for  their  patriotism  and  capable  service,  many  of  whom 
continued  in  Congress  for  years;  but  no  one  of  them  got 
the  insight  into  the  system,  the  knowledge  of  its  strength, 
resources,  and  possibilities,  in  their  few  or  many  sessions, 
that  Lincoln  did  in  his  two  thinking  years  in  Congress.  He 
learned  and  knew  and  saw  the  sophistries  of  thousands 
who  harangued  on  plans  of  gradual  emancipation,  moral 
force,  competition  with  free  labor,  colonization,  voluntary 
manumission,  and  plans  upon  plans  for  the  gradual  extinc- 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  319 

tion  of  slavery,  "if  the  Northern  agitators  would  only  leave 
it  alone." 

While  the  South,  under  its  strong  management  and  con- 
trol, led  and  directed  by  the  brightest,  bravest,  and  most 
competent  men  of  its  section,  was  pushing  ahead  with  all 
its  powers  and  energies  united,  spreading  their  domestic 
institution  in  every  direction  where  it  could  be  taken,  and 
in  well-planned  movements  absorbing  the  powers  and  pre- 
rogatives of  the  Xation,  their  opposition  was  adroitly  di- 
vided into  all  sorts  of  disputing  factions.  He  learned  that 
the  humane  ideas  of  the. early  statesmen  of  the  South,  with 
their  oft-repeated  purpose  of  peaceful  emancipation,  in  some 
Avay  had  passed  away,  and  that  a  revolution  of  sentiment 
and  policy  then  prevailed,  that  slavery  was  immensely  prof- 
itable, and  formed  the  basis  of  their  industrial  as  well  as 
their  social  system. 

He  learned  that  the  crops — corn,  cotton,  sugar,  rice,  and 
tobacco — cultivated  and  produced  by  the  unskilled  as  well 
as  the  unpaid  labor  of  the  slaves,  amounted  to  astonishing 
sums  annually,  rising  to  hundreds  of  millions  of  dollars  every 
year.  He  learned,  too,  that  sentiment  and  consideration  for 
the  Negro  race,  as  entitled  to  the  rights  of  men,  had  given 
way  to  the  grosser  calculations  of  profit  and  commercial 
business;  that  the  whole  fabric  of  Southern  society,  industry, 
and  progress  rested  on  slave  labor;  that,  aside  from  any 
question  of  right  or  wrong,  as  it  seemed  buttressed  in  its 
strength  at  Washington,  it  would  be  an  idle  task  to  think 
of  any  process  being  carried  out  there  for  the  extinction 
of  the  evil  where  all  except  a  few  either  received  tribute 
or  paid  it,  while  the  white  people  of  the  South  were  wasting 
away  in  idleness  and  disease  in  competition  with  slave-labor. 

The  mild  measure  presented  by  Mr.  Lincoln  provided 
for  the  liberation  of  slaves  held  and  owned  by  residents  of 
the  district,  excepting  those  that  belonged  to  offioers  of  the 
Government  and  citizens  of  the  slave  States  who  brought 


320  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

them  there  while  in  the  public  service,  and  held  them  for 
a  limited  period  afterwards.  This  was  intended  to  include 
only  the  household  and  personal  servants  of  those  who  were 
temporarily  located  there.  Next,  all  children  born  of  slave 
mothers  after  January  1,  1850,  shall  serve  a  limited  appren- 
ticeship. ISText,  the  Government  is  to  pay  slave-owners  full 
cash  value  of  slaves  on  appraisement,  and  liberate  them. 
Next,  all  fugitive  slaves  were  to  be  returned  to  their  own- 
ers. Finally,  the  act,  after  its  passage  by  Congress,  was  to 
be  submitted  to  the  qualified  voters  of  the  District,  and 
approved  by  a  majority  vote  before  becoming  a  law.  This 
was  Lincoln's  mild  measure  for  the  abolition  of  slavery, 
which  was  so  promptly  suppressed  by  Calhoun  and  his  lesser 
leaders. 

The  most  independent  people  of  the  South,  especially 
those  of  the  less  productive  regions  and  the  border  States, 
were  emigrating  from  under  the  direct  contention  against 
slavery  westward  and  northwestward  by  hundreds  of  thou- 
sands; but  many  of  these  were  so  overslaughed  with  the 
evil  influences  of  the  slaveholding  regime  that  by  unnum- 
bered thousands  they  became  more  effective  helpers  of  the 
slave  ascendency  in  the  new  States  than  they  had  been 
in  the  slave  ones,  that  drove  them  out  of  their  homes  seek- 
ing employment.  Lincoln  learned,  much  to  his  sorrow,  that 
the  system  of  which  Calhoun  vras  the  head  was  not  a  min- 
iature, small-bounded,  weak,  and  failing  domestic  institution 
that  was  to  be  extirpated  by  sentimental  assaults,  strongly- 
framed  resolutions,  or  the  unanswerable  logic  of  truth  and 
Christian  civilization,  but  that  it  was  one  of  the  strongest 
and  most  firmly-rooted  evils  that  the  world  had  ever  seen, 
and  that  God  alone  in  his  wisdom  could  extirpate. 

Such  means  of  arraigning  slavery  before  the  world  as  a 
gigantic  evil  were  all  needed,  and  were  put  in  full  operation 
against  it  for  generations ;  but  it  had  to  be  learned  and  con- 
sidered as  well,  that  the  evil  was  sustained  by  all  the  power 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  321 

and  strength  of  twelve  millions  of  white  people.  They  held 
almost  four  millions  of  black  people  as  slaves,  and  were 
consolidated  and  stronger  in  their  entirety  than  the  same 
number  of  people  anywhere,  excepting  only  the  somewhat 
larger  and  stronger  body  of  free  people  in  the  free  States; 
but  these  they  expected  to  overcome  and  defeat  in  adroitly- 
planned  political  divisions,  as  they  had  done  continuously 
from  the  accession  of  the  Louisiana  purchase  in  1803. 

It  was  of  infinite  benefit  to  him  to  serve  those  two  short 
years  in  Congress.  With  his  cause  of  justice  conceded,  and 
the  consent  of  the  slaveholders  of  the  District  and  the 
border  States  in  part,  he  could  do  nothing  whatever  from  the 
moment  that  the  slave-leaders  considered  his  proposition. 
It  was  well  that  he  learned  all  this  from  sources  of  respon- 
sibility beyond  question  of  doubt.  Without  all  this,  he  could 
not  have  been  the  leader  he  was  growing  to  be;  but  the 
Master  was  giving  him  opportunity,  and  he  became  a  better- 
trained  but  a  more  melancholy  man.  With  no  more  success 
than  if  he  had  been  presenting  petitions  and  preserving 
the  right  so  resolutely  fought  for  by  Adams,  he  retired  from 
Congress  willingly  at  the  close  of  his  term,  with  information 
beyond  value  to  him.  He  had  made  no  headway  against 
slavery,  but  he  had  seen  the  great  leaders  and  the  men  about 
them,  and  the  situation  and  drift  of  public  afl'airs.  Many 
of  these  older  leaders  were  in  their  physical  decline,  but 
wise  and  gifted  as  ever  in  knowledge  and  long  experience. 
He  saw  something  of  their  history  and  standing,  and  some 
of  these  came  to  know  him,  who  was  the  keenest-witted, 
most  penetrating,  and  far-seeing  man  of  his  time. 

Clay  was  there  in  his  age,  worn  and  disappointed  and  out 
of  humor  with  the  younger  men,  who  were  getting  ready  to 
make  and  did  make  Taylor,  and  not  Clay,  the  Whig  candi- 
date for  President.  Webster  was  there  in  his  ripened  age, 
the  one  time  master  and  leader,  still  revered  and  honored 
as  the  expounder  of  the  Constitution.  He  was  then  in  much 
21 


322  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

infirmity  beyond  his  years,  and  almost  consumed  by  the  in- 
satiable ambition  to  be  President.  Many  of  our  best  men 
have  been  infatuated  with  the  same  phantasy  that  bedrag- 
gled the  fame  of  our  great  constitutional  lawyer,  of  much 
higher  and  more  enduring  fame  than  the  office  would  have 
given  him — an  office  that  is  bartered  and  dickered  away 
about  three  times  out  of  four  to  the  ablest  trimmer  and 
straddler  of  his  time.  Though  "Godlike  Webster"  pandered 
for  it,  he  never  attained  it. 

Mr.  Lincoln  saw  Thurlow  "Weed  at  Albany,  able,  fear- 
less, and  outspoken  even  then  on  the  slavery  issue.  Weed 
was  the  best  manager,  political  turner,  wheeler  in  and 
wheeler  out  of  conventions,  that  the  country  had  seen  up 
to  his  day.  He  was  a  man  never  surpassed  in  that  kind  of 
work  until  Lincoln's  friend  Gridley  upset  him  and  his  can- 
didate so  completely  and  gTaciously  that  Weed  was  brought 
to  Lincoln's  support  as  cheerfully  as  though  lie  had  been  his 
own  choice  from  the  beginning. 

He  met  Horace  Greeley  in  Xew  York,  the  most  em- 
phatic and  daring  in  speech  and  in  his  newspaper  of  all  the 
opponents  then  fighting  slavery.  He  was  a  modern  political 
wonder,  the  most  audacious  and  immoderate  on  any  phase 
of  any  question  he  discussed.  He  was  an  extremist  in 
everything,  and  conservative  in  nothing.  He  was  the  most 
violent  antagonist  of  the  Democratic  party  for  some  twenty- 
five  years,  when  suddenly  in  IS? 2  he  became  its  candidate 
for  President.  He  was  a  successful,  truly  independent  jour- 
nalist for  over  twenty-four  years,  and  struck  slavery  more 
blows,  harder  and  more  continuous,  than  any  man  in  the 
anti-slavery  cause.  He  honestly  built  up  his  newspaper, 
and  held  the  fortune  which  came  from  his  own  indefatigable 
labor,  until  in  his  wild  mistake  of  being  a  candidate  he  was 
defeated,  disappointed,  and  stricken  unto  death.  His  life, 
his  fortune,  and  his  newspaper  were  taken  away  from  him 
in  a  short  three  months'  political  campaign. 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  323 

In  Washington,  Mr.  Lincoln  met  and  became  well  ac- 
quainted with  Governor  William  H.  Seward,  just  elected 
to  the  Senate  from  New  York,  who  was  to  be  with  him 
through  the  most  eventful  period  of  the  Nation's  history. 
He  also  made  a  pleasant  acquaintance  with  the  then  dis- 
tinguished Senator  Clayton,  of  Delaware,  who  was  to  be 
President  Taylor's  Secretary  of  State,  and  to  shape  the 
memorable  treaty  that  still  bears  his  name.  He  met  General 
Scott,  the  greatest  General  of  his  time,  and  better  informed 
than  any  about  him  of  the  extent  of  the  wicked  designs  of 
the  slave-leaders;  but  the  General  was  old,  testj^,  gouty, 
sore,  vain  to  the  highest  degree  for  an  American,  and 
almost  intolerant  of  opposition.  He  was  closing  a  long, 
brave,  and  chivalrous  career,  disappointed  that  "Taylor,  a 
frontier  colonel,"  was  nominated,  while  he,  the  military 
successor  of  Washington,  could  be  had  for  the  asking.  How- 
ever, after  that,  time  came  round  with  a  nomination  for  the 
old  hero  in  1852,  when  both  himself,  and  the  Whig  party 
with  him,  passed  away  of  too  much  slavery. 

Mr.  Lincoln  met  many  others  in  his  own  party,  and 
made  many  lasting  and  valued  acquaintances,  some  being 
of  great  help  to  him  in  the  near  future.  He  also  met  and 
made  many  agreeable  acquaintances  among  the  leaders  of 
the  slave  propaganda,  who  were  at  the  bottom  as  deter- 
mined that  the  Nation  should  be  all  slave  as  he  was  that  it 
should  be  all  free.  Calhoun  was  still  there,  as  feeble  and 
infirm  of  body  as  Clay,  but  directing  affairs  with  as  keen 
and  unclouded  intellect  as  when  he  first  came  to  Washing- 
ton City,  forty  years  before.  Jefferson  Davis  was  there, 
and  both  having  been  born  within  a  small  distance  of  each 
other  in  Kentucky,  their  personal  greetings  and  friendship 
were  cordial.  Davis  was  then  fresh  from  the  field  of  Bueiia 
Vista,  where  Colonel  Hardin,  Lincoln's  long-time  friend, 
fell  almost  within  sight  of  Davis,  and  in  respect  for  his 
memorv  thev  talked  of  him,  and  took  each  other's  measure. 


324  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

He  met  General  Lewis  Cass,  then  senator  from  Mich- 
igan, who  was  to  be  the  Democratic  candidate  against  Gen- 
eral Taylor  in  1848,  He  always  afterwards  respected  and 
honored  the  uprightness  and  rectitude  of  the  man,  who 
lacked  only  more  rigid  determination  to  become  a  great 
party  leader.  He  also  met  Toombs  and  Stephens,  Berrien 
and  Crawford,  and  many  other  brilliant  and  capable  South- 
ern leaders,  who  were  full  of  the  most  sanguine  hopes  and 
pronounced  beliefs  in  the  future  of  their  slave  system, 
Foote,  of  Mississippi,  Avas  there,  who  aspired  to  succeed 
Calhoun,  who  had  the  venom,  but  not  the  sense,  to  be  his 
successor.  Having  nothing  in  his  nature  so  strong  as  pre- 
tension and  extravagance  of  speech,  he  became  so  common 
that  he  won  the  title  of  "Hangman  Foote,"  and  harmlessly 
passed  out  of  mind.  There  were  many  others  at  Washing- 
ton and  elsewhere  whom  he  met,  a  thousand  or  more,  that 
were  to  be  active  and  prominent  in  the  great  work  he  was 
then  so  unconsciously  approaching.  He  became  acquainted 
with  and  admired  Preston  Blair,  Sr.,  who  supported  Jackson 
through  thick  and  thin  with  his  newspaper,  about  the  first 
work  of  the  kind  ever  undertaken  in  any  Administration, 
and  with  his  sons,  Frank  and  Montgomery,  who  became  his 
friends  and  supporters. 

He  renewed  a  pleasant  acquaintance  with  Senator  Ben- 
ton, of  Missouri,  "Old  Bullion,"  as  he  was  known,  even  then 
passing  from  party  control,  because  he  knew  that  slavery 
was  a  corrupting  and  destroying  system  to  free  labor,  that 
could  end  only  in  national  decay  and  ruin,  and  was  as  fear- 
less in  his  declarations  about  it  as  in  any  of  his  opinions. 
From  his  own  State  of  Illinois  there  were  with  him  John 
Wentworth  in  the  House,  and  General  Shields  and  Judge 
Douglas  in  the  Senate,  all  Democrats,  with  whom  he  was 
on  the  most  friendly  terms  and  in  accord  on  public  affairs, 
save  strictly  on  matters  of  partisan  division. 

When  we  make  a  recast  of  these  distinguished  men,  some 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  325 

of  them  eminent  in  their  day,  and  in  the  judgment  of  man- 
kind to  remain  so,  we  will  certainly  conclude  that  Lincoln 
had  opportunities.  With  those  who  favored  and  those  who 
opposed  him  alike,  it  M^as  conceded  that  no  one  ever  took 
better  advantage  of  the  sources  of  information  than  he  did; 
hence  having  been  with  these  leaders  under  the  favorable 
conditions  related,  we  know  well  that  he  returned  home 
with  a  fund  of  information  and  knowledge  that  was  equal, 
at  least,  to  that  of  any  other  man  in  or  out  of  the  Capital. 
He  came  home  trained  and  equipped,  as  those  who  knew  best 
expected  he  Avould  be,  the  equal  of  any  man  who  chose  to 
meet  him,  as  Douglas,  who  never  trifled  with  unimportant 
persons,  did;  and  who  was  then,  by  all  concurrent  events 
and  party  movements,  as  near  master  of  our  public  affairs 
as  it  was  possible  for  him  to  be. 

It  had  been  said  of  Douglas,  that  he  shifted  and  pos- 
tured and  veered  his  political  craft  to  the  wind,  and  strove 
almost  against  fate  to  evade  and  survive  the  inevitable 
gathering  storm.  He,  of  all  the  leaders  in  his  time,  was 
trounced  and  cathechised  most,  for  his  position  on  slavery. 
First,  this  was  brought  about  by  the  concealed,  but  as 
strong,  desire  of  the  pro-slavery  cabal  to  destroy  his  political 
influence  at  all  hazards,  as  being  really  the  most  formidable 
foe  in  the  way  of  their  control  of  the  Government  and 
slavery  extension,  right  or  wrong.  To  have  removed  him 
from  his  leadership  would  have  been,  as  they  knew  and  be- 
lieved, almost  a  crowning  victory,  for  it  did  not  appear  that 
any  other  leader  in  the  Democratic  party  could  resist  their 
power  and  retain  leadership.  Hence  in  every  possible  way 
they  insidiously  sought  his  destruction  and  overthrow.  Tn 
this  desire  began  the  persecution  of  Douglas. 

Just  here,  as  we  have  recalled  their  memory  in  this  long 
list  of  able  and  distinguished  leaders,  let  us  remember  that 
no  one  except  Lincoln  had  a  more  consistent  record  on  the 
subject  of  slavery  extension  than  Judge  Douglas.    President 


326  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

Taylor,  whom  Lincoln  heartily  supported  in  1848,  was  known 
to  be  in  accord  with  Clay  and  Douglas  on  the  slavery  ques- 
tion, and  he  recommended,  in  his  messages  to  Congress,  let- 
ting slavery  alone  in  the  Territories,  subject  only  to  the 
action  of  the  people  in  making  their  constitutions  and  pre- 
paring for  admission  as  States  into  the  Union.  This  was 
the  same  idea  of  non-intervention  as  it  was  held  and  pre- 
sented and  stoutly  defended  by  Douglas  and  others  at  the 
time  and  subsequently. 

As  very  few  did,  Douglas  did  not  see  as  early  and  clearly 
as  Lincoln  that  slavery,  like  all  forms  of  intrenched  evil, 
was  to  conquer  or  perish  in  its  battle,  not  with  parties  or  in 
them,  but  with  the  Nation,  should  the  Nation  attempt  to 
restrict  or  abolish  it.  Douglas  did  not  realize  this  in  its  full 
meaning  until  in  the  closing  of  his  great  career,  when  he 
came  loyally  and  manfully  to  the  stand  that  saved  Lincoln's 
Administration,  and  in  so  doing  saved  the  blessed  Nation 
of  freemen  as  no  other  political  union  and  consolidation 
could  have  done.  But  it  is  true  that,  earnestly  absorbed 
in  the  most  angered  party  disputes,  he  did  not  foresee  the 
assault  in  all  its  horror  like  many  other  thousands,  until  the 
insurrection  was  ready. 

Lincoln's  partnership  with  Logan,  which  began  early  in 
1841,  was  fortunate  and  advantageous  to  both,  perhaps  the 
most  so  to  Lincoln,  as  it  relieved  him  of  a  great  deal  of 
unpaid  services  and  political  work  that  could  be  done  by 
others.  He  gained  a  remunerative  business  from  the  begin- 
ning, and  more  firmly  settled  himself  in  regular  habits, 
methodical  rules  of  caring  for,  attending  to,  and  managing 
the  aifairs  of  the  firm.  Springfield  had  grown.  The  State 
was  growing  rapidly,  and  these  men,  helping  each  other  in 
many  ways,  were  sharing  the  benefit  of  the  wonderful  West- 
ern development. 

From  this  time  forward  he  had  all  the  business  he  could 
attend  to,  with  fees  so  moderate  for  his  services  that  a  client 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  327 

was  seldom  known  to  object.  He  built  his  Springfield  resi- 
dence soon  after  this,  not  large  or  showy  in  any  way,  but 
commodious  and  comfortable,  meeting  every  requirement 
of  the  family's  plain  and  simple  manner  of  living.  There 
was  a  generous  hospitality  in  the  Lincoln  household  that 
no  one  ever  enjoyed  without  lasting  remembrance  of  it. 
Mr.  Lincoln  and  his  good  wife  took  care  of  every  one  that 
passed  their  door,  and  did  it  right,  so  that  they  remem- 
bered the  entertainment  like  a  visit  to  the  homestead  of 
their  kindred. 

He  was  so  kind,  careful,  and  watchful  of  every  one's  com- 
fort, and  so  good-natured,  never  too  tired  or  too  busy  to 
help,  that  their  entertainment  was  never  forgotten.  Mr. 
Lincoln  could  do  almost  anything  about  the  house.  His 
good  stepmother  taught  him,  and  he  never  forgot  her  les- 
son. He  did  not  in  any  sense  need  to  look  after  the  house 
or  the  care  of  it,  for  Mrs.  Lincoln  was  as  competent  as  she 
was  energetic;  but  he  always  helped  when  he  could,  and 
said  that  he  liked  to  know  how.  One  day  he  asked  the  writer, 
"Can  you  peel  and  cook  potatoes?"  The  reply  was:  "Yes. 
My  mother  taught  me  to  do  almost  anything  in  and  about 
the  house,  and,  Avhen  it  has  been  necessary,  I  have  found 
it  a  help  and  convenience."  He  continued:  "I  remember, 
you  have  a  good  Scotch  mother.  May  God  give  us  more 
mothers  who  will  teach  their  children  how  to  work!  You 
would  scarcely  think  that  a  man  of  my  size  and  awkward- 
looking  movements  could  do  as  particular  work  as  peeling 
small  potatoes,  but  I  have  done  it,  and  I  did  it  well."  This 
was  true,  and  it  is  related  here  to  show  the  general  knowl- 
edge and  precision  of  the  man. 

He  had  the  strength  of  a  giant,  and  the  impressive  dig- 
nit}^  that  at  once  convinced  every  one  of  his  strength,  and 
the  wit  and  sense  of  how  best  to  use  his  combined  will  and 
power;  but  he  had  the  most  delicate  tact  and  skill  and  sense 
of  touch  and  a  propriety  about  all  of  it  that  was  at  least 


328  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

unusual.  Hence  there  was,  to  those  who  knew  him  well,  no 
wonder  that  he  could  peel  small  j)otatoes,  and  do  it  well. 
He  was  precise,  delicate,  and  particular  about  all  his  work. 
His  handwriting  and  his  work  as  a  surveyor,  his  figures, 
lines,  and  drafts  of  roads,  bridges,  and  streams  were  models 
of  neatness  and  orderly  care,  and  this  is  true  of  all  his- 
written  work  that  required  careful  preparation. 

He  repeatedly  declined  all  manner  of  foreclosure  suits  or 
processes  at  law  against  farmers  or  tenants  who  were  strug- 
gling along  to  complete  paj'ments  for  their  homesteads,  or 
were  in  distress  of  one  kind  or  another,  to  make  the  scanty 
living  for  their  families.  It  is  probably  true  that  the  largest 
fee  he  ever  earned  and  received  in  a  suit  at  law  was  for 
services  rendered  an  Hlinois  railway  company,  to  collect 
which  he  was  compelled  to  bring  suit  and  collect  it  under 
judgment  of  the  court. 

He  was  liberal  and  generous,  and,  being  well  known, 
was  occasionally  imposed  on  by  some  who  would  rather  beg 
than  work,  but  hardly  ever  more  than  once  by  the  same 
person,  for  reason  that  his  rebukes  and  reprimands  were 
so  truthfully  impressive  that  the  pretender  would  rather 
seek  honest  labor  than  wince  under  his  wit  and  irony.  He 
was  especially  watchful  and  liberal  in  the  care  and  educa- 
tion of  his  family  and  those  who  enjoyed  his  care  and  hos- 
pitable course  of  living. 

One  who  had  frequently  been  a  visitor  under  his  roof 
wrote:  "I  have  many  times  enjoyed  the  homelike  and  old- 
fashioned  hospitality  of  Springfield,  but  one  of  the  most 
cheerful  I  remember  with  saddened  pleasure  was  the  dinners 
and  small  evening  parties  given  by  our  friends,  the  Lincolns. 
In  Mrs.  Lincoln's  pleasant  and  simple  home,  where  all  was 
so  orderly,  refined,  and  entertaining,  there  was  always  anxi- 
ety on  the  part  of  both  of  them,  with  a  cordial  and  hearty 
Western  welcome,  that  put  their  guests  and  all  about  them 
perfectly  at  ease.     Their  dinners   were  famous   for   their 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  329 

abundance,  and  the  old  Kentucky  dishes,  so  delicate  and 
appetizing  in  flavor,  were  well  prepared.  They  often  had 
venison,  turkey,  and  other  game,  which  was  so  easy  to  get 
that  it  was  always  at  hand.  After  all,  it  was  the  home  sur- 
roundings, the  kind  and  cordial  greetings,  the  wit,  humor, 
and  anecdote,  and  the  hearty  good-will  of  both  of  them 
that  remain  a  pleasant  and  enduring  memory." 

He  had  so  fully  established  himself  as  one  of  the  ablest 
men  in  the  practice  of  the  law,  that  in  April,  1845,  not  on 
account  of  any  divergement  or  want  of  harmony,  but,  for 
reasons  which  were  prudent  and  satisfactory,  they  dissolved 
their  pleasant,  mutually  beneficial  partnership,  remaining 
afterwards  as  constant  and  good  friends  in  all  their  relations 
as  they  had  ever  been.  In  proof  of  this,  no  man  ever  paid 
higher  tribute  to  the  genius,  work,  and  high  character  of 
Mr.  Lincoln  than  his  tutor  and  law  partner.  Judge  Logan. 

From  the  dissolution  of  partnership  with  Stewart  in  1841, 
he  was  with  Logan  four  years  to  April,  1845,  after  which 
in  the  following  July,  he  formed  a  life-lasting  partnership 
with  William  H.  Herndon,  then  a  competent  young  man 
of  the  Springfield  bar.  Their  business  plans,  ideas,  and  tem- 
peraments harmonized,  so  that  there  was  perfect  accord 
throughout  their  lives,  except  on  the  slavery  question,  on 
which  Herndon  was  so  saturated  with  the  old  Whig  con- 
servative ideas  that  slavery  should  be  let  alone,  that  Mr. 
Lincoln  pursued  his  own  course  independently  of  Mr.  Hern- 
don's  opinions,  as  of  the  others  with  whom  he  labored 
throughout  that  period.  The  advantage  of  this  was  that 
all  extraneous  matters  were  excluded  from  consideration 
or  discussion  in  their  law  office. 

Mr.  Lincoln  was  away  from  home  much  of  his  time,  as 
his  increasing  business  took  him  regularly  for  more  than  half 
of  the  year  into  the  counties  of  the  old  Eighth  Judicial 
District.  During  this  absence,  Mr.  Herndon  carried  on  the 
Springfield  business  to  the  entire  satisfaction  of  both,  and 


330  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

the  relation  lasted  as  long  as  they  lived,  for  there  was  still 
unsettled  business  of  the  firm  after  both  of  them  had  passed 
away,  and  neither  of  them  made  any  other  partnership.  It 
was  a  pleasant  thought  to  Mr.  Lincoln  that  he  would  return 
home  and  take  up  the  law  business  just  where  he  left  it 
when  he  went  to  Washington  City.  This  was  a  recom- 
mendation of  the  plodding,  continuing  business  care  of  Mr. 
Herndon  that  very  few  men  ever  attained. 

It  was  during  the  years  from  1845  to  1858,  with  the 
two  years  of  service  in  Congress,  that  he  made  such  astonish- 
ing and  remarkable  advancement  in  all  that  there  ever  was 
of  the  man  and  his  achievements.  He  had  gained  enduring 
success  in  his  profession.  In  his  plain  way  of  living  he  was 
comfortable,  at  ease  and  content,  with  all  his  wants  for 
himself  and  his  family  supplied  and  within  his  reach.  He 
had  paid  off  most  of  the  "old  store  account  debts,"  in  his 
own  language,  "My  national  debt,"  by  1846,  and  the  very 
last  of  it  in  1849.  Thus  he  was  comfortably  situated  in  life, 
with  every  reasonable  wish  gratified. 

This  seemed  in  business  of  money -making  all  he  desired; 
for  if  he  had  taken  to  the  work  of  amassing  money  and  mak- 
ing a  fortune  and  getting  large  properties,  so  common  among 
the  prosperous  lawyers  about  him,  he  could  have  done  so 
more,  easily  than  any  one  of  them,  for  his  opportunities 
were  abundant,  and  never  left  him.  It  was  not  lack  of 
knowledge  that  led  him  to  this  course  of  life;  for  had  he 
been  so  inclined,  or  heeded  the  advice  of  many  of  them, 
and  one  of  them  in  particular,  with  his  opportunities  and 
the  aid  of  this  friend,  who  tried  several  times  to  turn  him 
that  way,  he  could  have  built  up  a  fortune  as  great  as  that 
of  any  man  in  his  region;  but  he  had  neither  desire  nor  in- 
clination for  it,  and  so  emphatically  expressed  himself  to 
his  friends  on  the  subject  that  they  fully  appreciated  his 
motives.  He  held  that  to  do  so  would  distract  him  and 
take  him  away  from  his  highest  duty  and  whatever  might 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  331 

come  of  that.  His  tenacity  on  this  subject  was  so  strong 
and  continuous  that  it  surprised  Mr.  Gridley  very  much, 
who  counseled  with  him  until  he  saw  that  it  was  not  agree- 
able. There  seems  little  doubt  that  he  was  so  strongly 
impressed  with  his  duty,  that  nothing  would  swerve  him  from 
his  positive  line  of  work  as  it  came  to  him.  We  know  that 
he  never  allowed  any  kind  or  character  of  business  to  permit 
the  least  deviation  from  it.  In  human  wisdom,  as  far  as  we 
can  see,  this  was  surely  an  inspiration. 

On  Mr.  Lincoln's  return  from  Washington  as  a  repre- 
sentative, his  friends  noticed  that  his  thoughtfulness,  run- 
ning sometimes  into  melancholy,  had  deepened  and  more 
firmly  settled  into  his  nature.  These  thoughtful  "spells," 
to  which  his  friends  had  been  so  long  accustomed,  did  not 
occasion  uneasiness,  but  were  remarkable  instances  and  proof 
that  he  had  undertaken  some  more  difficult  or  perplexing 
problem  for  deeper  and  more  profound  study.  By  the  ad- 
vice of  some  well-informed  friends  at  Springfield,  and  per- 
haps others  at  Washingon  who  favorably  impressed  him,  he 
entered  a  new  course  of  reading  and  patient,  careful  stud}^, 
taking  up  for  it,  to  begin  with,  the  higher  mathematics, 
logic,  political  economy,  mental  and  moral  philosophy,  and 
standard  literature. 

Thus  at  about  forty  years  of  age  he  became  the  most 
diligent  and  careful  student  of  what  might  be  called  his 
higher  reasonings,  of  any  part  of  his  life.  He  had  reached 
success,  and  was  at  the  head  of  the  law  profession.  He  had 
been  two  years  at  the  Nation's  Capital,  full  of  men  with  their 
ideas.  He  had  measured  himself  with  them,  and  had  talked 
to  satisfied  and  listening  thousands  as  well  as  he  had  done 
in  his  generally  attended  Western  campaigns.  He  had  can- 
vassed New  England  and  New  York,  the  seat  of  colleges, 
institutions  of  learning,  well-informed  and  well-educated 
men,  sustained  by  thousands  of  admiring  friends,  who 
through  their  lives  were  faithful  and  constant.     He  had 


332  ABEAHAM  LINCOLN. 

seen  the  world  of  America.  He  was  not  dissatisfied  with  his 
place  among  men,  but  came  home  satisfied  with  the  advice 
of  some  good  counsel  about  him,  that  with  the  approval 
of  his  own  seldom-erring  judgment  led  him  to  take  up 
the  line  of  reading  and  closer  study  that  so  highly  developed 
his  marvelous  reasoning  and  analytical  powers. 

Hence  he  made  a  selection  of  several  books,  Bacon's 
"Essays,"  Locke's  "Human  Understanding,"  Hamilton's 
"Mental  Philosophy,"  and  a  selected  compilation  of  standard 
English  literature.  He  grew  in  art  and  methods  of  reason- 
ing and  analysis,  until  he  became  so  well  trained,  bright- 
ened, and  ready  for  debate  and  argument,  that  no  man's 
mere  pleading  ever  escaped  him  or  stood  in  his  way  in  any 
discussion.  When  in  1858  he  came  to  the  celebrated  wordy 
combat  with  Douglas,  he  forced  that  master  of  debate  and 
senatorial  tactics,  the  equal  of  any  man  in  the  Senate,  to 
a  disclosure  and  declaration  of  his  beliefs,  which  no  man  in 
either  House  or  Senate  had  ever  been  able  to  do  in  all  his 
fifteen  years  in  Congress  up  to  that  time. 

It  was  no  accident  that  he  was  able  for  this  talented 
and  high-wrought  work.  Lincoln,  untrained  and  unstudied, 
would  have  been  a  pleasant,  agreeable  man,  whose  stories 
and  humor  would  have  entertained  all  of  his  not  very  large 
town;  but  Lincoln,  with  his  great  intellect  shining  in  the 
power  of  the  gathered  treasures  of  time,  was  another  man, 
a  greater  than  Moses,  Luther,  or  Washington,  or  Madison  in 
debate,  equal  and  able  for  one  or  all  of  the  strongest  foemen 
of  the  propaganda,  Calhoun  or  his  successor,  Jefferson 
Davis. 

Asahel  Gridley,  of  Bloomington,  HI.,  came  there  in  an 
early  day.  He  was  a  lawyer  with  good  attainments,  and 
was  an  active,  untiring,  and  such  an  altogether  capable  man, 
that,  though  he  had  gained  high  standing  and  a  lucrative 
business  at  the  bar,  he  tired  of  the  work  as  not  affording  the 
field  of  energy  suited  to  his  liking.     He  took  to  banking, 


THE  MEN  OF  NTS  TIME.  333 

real  estate  operations,  and  eventually  railroad  construction 
and  management.  He  was  a  prodig}'  in  his  day,  taken  to  be 
so  in  his  region  by  those  who  did  and  those  who  did  not 
know  him.  He  was  active  and  energetic,  and  accumulated  a 
fortune  back  in  the  thirties,  which  was  swept  away  in  the 
financial  whirlwind  from  1837  to  1840;  but  he  was  soon  in 
active  business  again,  and  had  accumulated  a  larger  fortune 
by  1850.  He  was  the  antithesis  of  Mr.  Lincoln  in  almost 
every  observable  way,  but  the  man  among  men  who  did  the 
most,  after  he  knew  him,  to  help  establish  and  sustain  Lin- 
coln in  his  steadfast  progress. 

His  eyes  seemed  so  restless  that  they  flashed  a  hundred- 
fold more  than  diamonds.  His  perceptions  were  so  strong 
and  his  understanding  so  instant  to  act,  and  so  complete, 
that  it  was  said  of  him,  "Gridley  knows  a  man  through  and 
through  before  the  rest  of  us  ask  him  to  take  a  seat  or  pull 
off  his  hat."  A  volume  could  be  written  and  do  no  more 
than  bare  justice  to  this  nervous,  high-strung,  untiring 
little  man;  but  the  facts,  as  we  proceed,  will  disclose  much 
of  him  and  his  friendly,  well-directed  work  for  Mr.  Lincoln 
and  his  cause. 

Though  Mr.  Gridley  was  highly  qualified,  he  would  never 
hold  any  office  in  Illinois.  This  well-observed  determina- 
tion and  his  earnest  support  of  Lincoln  at  all  times  without 
solicitation,  and  the  further  fact  that  Judge  Davis,  of  Bloom- 
ington,  became  prominent  as  a  man  who  never  declined  one, 
obscured  Gridley,  who  said  on  one  occasion:  '"Well,  it  is  all 
right.  I  don't  want  any  office,  and  I'm  sincere  about  it; 
besides.  Judge  Davis  will  always  serve,  and  one  prominent 
office-holder  like  him  is  enough  for  a  small  town  like  Bloom- 
ington."  As  he  said,  he  had  not  courted  notoriety,  but  con- 
sistently avoided  it  in  every  possible  way.  In  the  early 
fifties  he  had  regained  a  fortune,  and  firmly  held  his  wealth 
and  business  influence.  He  was  then  a  prosperous  banker, 
real  estate  owner,  and  man  of  affairs,  a  man  more  sought 


334  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

after  in  business  and  property  transactions  than  any  man 
in  that  part  of  the  State. 

He  had  about  retired  from  the  law  business,  but  was  in 
a  position  where  he  could  turn  "a.  lot  of  cases  to  any  lawyer 
that  suits  me."  Mr.  Lincoln  was  then  a  growing  man  in 
the  law  as  well  as  in  public  affairs,  and  was  visiting  Bloom- 
ington  regiilarly  as  lawyer  and  counsel  in  its  courts.  Mr, 
Gridley  was  his  steadfast  friend,  as  he  had  been  for  years; 
and,  retiring  from  the  work,  had  planned  to  give  Mr.  Lincoln 
the  substantial  help  of  turning  his  law  business  and  new 
cases  as  they  came  over  to  him.  He  believed  in  Lincoln, 
was  his  sincere  friend,  and  in  proof  of  it  he  proceeded  with 
his  plan.  Taking  an  early  opportunity,  he  invited  Lincoln 
into  his  back  office,  where  he  said,  almost  abruptly:  ''Mr. 
Lincoln,  if  you  will  come  to  Bloomington  regularly  enough 
to  attend  to  it,  I  will  turn  over  to  you  all  my  law  business, 
and  enough  more  that  will  come,  to  make  you  a  respectable 
living;  and  it  shall  be  done  so  unobtrusively  that  it  will 
disturb  no  one,  nor  in  the  slightest  degree  deprive  any  one 
of  his  money  or  his  rights."  Mr.  Lincoln  smiled  and  was 
pleased,  as  he  made  no  effort  to  conceal,  and  pleasantly 
asked,  "What  shall  I  do,  Mr.  Gridley,  in  return  for  so  kind 
and  unexpected  a  favor  as  this  generous  proposal  of  yours 
is,  if  I  properly  understand  it?"  "Attend  to  the  business," 
Mr.  Gridley  replied. 

In  their  pleasant  conversation  over  it,  Mr.  Gridley  con- 
tinued: "Do  not  consider  this  an  act  of  generosity  on  my 
part  altogether.  Your  qualifications  and  standing  entitle 
you  to  such  recognition,  and  it  will  be  my  pleasure  to  make 
the  business  agreeable  to  you.  I  will  help  in  every  way 
I  can  to  make  Bloomington  as  much  of  a  home  to  you  as 
may  suit  your  convenience."  This  business,  which  proved 
to  be  more  than  either  one  of  them  expected,  gave  Lincoln 
as  many,  if  not  more,  law  cases  than  he  had  at  Springfield. 
It  made  a  new  business  center  for  him  and  growing  law 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  335 

practice,  which  he  closely  attended  to  until  he  was  nomi- 
nated for  President  in  1860. 

From  Bloomington,  as  from  Springfield,  his  home,  forty 
miles  south,  he  extended  his  business  to  the  twelve  to 
fifteen  counties  of  the  old  Eighth  Judicial  Circuit  lying  east 
to  the  eastern  line  of  the  State,  and  occasionally  into 
Indiana.  Judge  Davis  presided  over  the  old  Eighth  Circuit 
so  long,  that  a  great  many  boys  grew  to  be  men  while  he 
was  holding  the  office,  and  many  of  us  came  to  think  that 
he  was  the  only  man  fit  to  hold  the  office,  mainly,  perhaps, 
because  no  other  had  done  so  for  many  years.  At  least 
we  knew  that  those  opposed  to  him  could  only  disagree, 
but  could  not  find  a  capable  man  to  contend  with  him  for 
the  judgeship.  Thus  circumstanced  for  almost  a  gener- 
ation, we  came  to  have  confidence  in  him  as  a  judge. 

He  was  a  well-qualified,  highly-respected  man  and  law- 
yer, educated  in  Ohio,  finishing  his  course  in  Kenyon 
College.  He  wa^  a  Whig  of  the  strictly  conservative  sort, 
as  classed  in  their  differing  factions,  divided  according  to 
their  radical  or  conservative  ideas  on  the  slavery  question. 
He  was  always  a  strange  and  unsized  political  quantity,  but 
usually  more  tenacious  concerning  his  personal  affiliations 
than  his  political  beliefs.  He  did  not  like  the  Democrats  of 
Hlinois  personally,  and  never  took  to  them  except  to  accept 
an  office  from  them  late  in  life,  his  keeping  of  which  they 
regretted  as  much  as  they  did  their  giving  it.  With  his 
personal  dislikes  for  the  Democrats,  with  whom  he  scarcely 
held  difference  on  the  slavery  question,  but  guided  mostly 
by  the  reasons  given  in  the  Whig  dissolution  of  1850  to  1852, 
he  drifted  into  the  new-forming  Republican  party.  He  had 
formed  a  strong  attachment  and  friendship  for  and  with 
Mr.  Lincoln,  whom  he  admired  as  much  as  he  did  any  other 
man;  but  politically  he  was  reticent  and  non-committal. 
Continuing  very  cautiously,  he  became  more  conservative 
as  a  recruit  to  Lincoln's  forming  party  than  he  had  been 


336  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

among  the  "old  Silver  Grays"  under  Clay.  He  was  so  much 
so,  that  during  the  whole  period  of  his  office-holding  in  the 
Republican  part}^,  which  was  continuous,  with  all  his  capa- 
bilities and  his  long  and  complete  training,  and  in  a  time, 
too,  that  wrenched  men  from  doubtful  and  equivocal  hiding- 
places,  he  never  made  a  speech  or  wrote  an  argument  in 
defense  of  the  party,  seemingly  satisfied  with  the  personal 
relation  of  holding  office. 

An  apology  was  made  for  him,  that  judges  should  ab- 
stain from  party  dicussions;  but  it  was  at  once  replied  that 
Roger  B.  Taney  was  a  judge,  and  that  if  he  would,  in  a  loyal, 
searching,  and  masterly  reply,  uncover  the  gaunt  and  deadly 
purpose  to  nationalize  slavery  in  the  "Dred  Scott  decision," 
as  formulated  by  that  judge,  he  would  achieve  lasting  fame. 


CHAPTER  XV. 

IIjSTOOLN'S  succession  to  Gridley's  business  and  his  in- 
.  fluence  was  a  help  that  was  timely,  and  which  no  other 
man  was  in  a  condition  to  give.  They  grew  to  be  inti- 
mate friends,  and  remained  so,  with  as  firm  and  lasting 
attachment  as  ever  existed  between  men  of  such  differing 
ideas  and  elements  of  character.  The  writer  believes  that 
Gridley  was  the  first  man  to  discover  the  genius  of  Lincoln. 
Many  believed  in  Mr.  Lincoln  as  a  leader,  a  coming  man, 
talented  and  sure  to  rise,  growing  up  with  him  from  the  time 
that  "the  boys  fell  in,  marched  in  line  behind  him,  and  made 
him  their  captain;"  but  perhaps  about  1851,  when  the  writer 
was  a  student  at  Bloomington,  and  a  favorite  of  Gridley, 
he  was  asked  by  that  gentleman,  "What  do  you  think  of  Lin- 
coln?" I  replied  at  once,  "I  like  him."  Gridley  broke  out 
again,  louder,  but  not  a  bit  unpleasant,  and  with  a  charm  and 
strength  that  he  was  master  of:  "Like  him!  Yes,  and  why 
should  n't  you  and  all  the  rest  of  us  love  him,  and  follow 
him  as  a  deliverer?  He  has  the  greatest  soul  in  him  that  T 
ever  saw  in  a  man  in  my  life."  This  was  an  impromptu 
speech,  made  when  I  was  getting  ready  for  school,  but  it 
rang  in  my  ears,  and  has  remained  in  mind  ever  since. 

Judge  Davis  became,  and  was  to  all  appearances,  an  inti- 
mate friend  and  associate  of  Mr.  Lincoln.  They  were  to- 
gether necessarily  as  they  traveled  over  the  circuit  month 
after  month  for  ten  or  twelve  years,  at  first  on  horseback 
and  in  buggies,  and  then  on  the  railroads  after  they  were 
built  in  1853-55,  when  the  Illinois  Central  and  the  Chicago, 
Alton  &  St.  Louis  Railways  were  extended  through  the  State. 
22  337 


338  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

Lincoln  was  so  well  liked  all  over  the  circuit  by  the  court, 
the  bar,  and  the  people  that  it  was  a  real  disappointment  to 
them  when  he  was  kept  away  from  the  term  of  court  in  any 
one  of  the  counties.  He  became  and  was  respected  and 
honored  and  trusted  as  a  friend  by  almost  every  one  who 
ever  knew  him  throughout  the  several  counties.  All  knew 
Lincoln  and  liked  him,  for  many  had  heard  of  or  had  re- 
ceived lasting  benefits  in  their  communities  from  his  peace- 
making adjustments.  It  was  believed  by  those  who  had  the 
best  facilities  of  knowing,  sheriffs'  clerks  and  county  attor- 
neys, that  by  his  advice  and  earnest  co-operation  more  dis- 
putes were  settled  out  of  the  courts  than  in  them,  and  as  a 
rule  these  settlements  left  the  litigants  friends.  At  least 
the  number  so  settled  was  large,  and  grew  constantly  as  he 
became  better  known. 

Davis  and  Lincoln  were  personal  friends,  but  disagreed 
widely  in  political  matters.  The  writer  would  not  disturb 
the  relations  of  either  of  them,  and  their  memory  would  be 
respected  without  the  relation  of  the  facts  and  subjects  on 
which  they  differed.  The  differences  between  them,  with 
the  writer  mixed  up  in  the  tangle,  gave  him  an  insight  into 
Lincoln's  real  and  heroic  character,  better  than  and  con- 
firmatory of  Gridley's  discovery  of  his  great  soul. 

Davis  was  a  careful,  considerate  judge,  letting  the  court 
run  with  as  little  restriction  as  possible  on  the  officers, 
juries,  lawyers,  and  litigants,  not  to  the  point  of  disorder, 
but  in  the  easy  Western  way,  "that  gave  every  man  a  chance," 
with  no  favor  to  any  one.  Lincoln  did  not  have  favor  in  the 
court  because  of  personal  friendship,  for  he  neither  cared 
for  nor  desired  it;  for  at  any  time  after  1849  he  was  fully 
conscious  of  his  wonderful  power  over  men,  and  one  of  the 
chief  objects  in  many  cases  at  the  bar  was  not  how  to  favor 
him,  but  how  to  prevent  in  some  way  the  preponderant  or 
overwhelming  exercise  of  his  great  influence  against  a  con- 
testant. 


THE  MEN  OF  HJS  TIME.  339 

In  some  terms  of  court  he  almost  held  a  little  outside 
court  of  his  own,  settling  disputes  and  quarrels  between 
those  who  ought  to  have  had  better  sense,  as  he  strongly 
laid  down  the  principles  of  justice  before  them.  Leonard 
Swett,  the  most  brilliant  man  of  the  bar  next  to  Lincoln, 
said:  "There  is  something  remarkable  about  these  Lincoln 
settlements  and  arbitrations.  The  parties  always  submit; 
they  seem  to  think  they  have  to  submit,  which  is  very  little 
short  of  the  power  he  exercises  over  a  jury,  before  which 
these  arbitrated  disputes  would  otherwise  come.  He  is  so 
positive  and  final  with  them  as  to  make  his  judgment  equiva- 
lent to  a  settlement  in  court.  In  all  my  observation  of  these 
cases,  only  one  man  objected  seriously  and  threatened  to 
take  his  case  into  court.  It  happened  he  was  one  of  Lin- 
coln's clients;  but  when  the  man  objected  to  Lincoln's  arbi- 
tration, and  said,  'I  will  take  the  case  into  court,'  Lincoln 
gave  him  one  of  his  deep-searching  looks,  and  said,  'Very 
well,  Jim,  I  will  take  the  case  against  you  for  nothing.'  But 
that  was  unnecessary,  for  the  penetrating  look  had  settled 
Jim  and  his  case." 

Swett  once  again  said  of  him:  "If  he  ever  had  any  su- 
periors before  a  jury — and  the  more  intelligent  the  jury  was 
the  better  it  pleased  him — I  never  heard  them.  In  my 
younger  days  I  often  heard  Tom  Corwin,  Sargent  Prentiss, 
Eufus  Choate,  and  Humphrey  Marshall;  but  Lincoln  at  his 
best  was  more  sincere  and  impressive  than  all  of  them, 
and  what  he  could  not  accomplish  Avith  a  jury  no  living 
man  need  ever  try." 

His  standing  with  all  the  members  of  the  bar  was  so 
cordial  and  candid  that  every  lawyer  held  him  his  own  per- 
sonal friend;  and  in  the  later  years  after  1850  there  was 
scarcely  a  term  of  court  in  any  county  which  he  attended 
at  which  he  did  not  make  a  political  address,  not  because  of 
any  special  desire,  for  he  declined  whenever  he  could,  but 
the  lawyers  and  all  about  the  court  would  gather  round 


340  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

him  and  persevere  with  him — Democrats,  Whigs,  Eepub- 
licans,  Know  Nothings  or  what  nots,  and  those  on  the 
fence — and  persuade  him  to  make  them  a  speech.  This 
he  would  do  regardless  of  how  little  he  was  inclined  or  felt 
like  doing  it,  and  when  it  came  there  was  always  something 
of  Lincoln  in  it,  something  new,  cheerful,  and  with  so  much 
humor  in  it  that  it  would  last  for  a  month;  and  old  and 
infirm  men,  too  feeble  to  go  anywhere  else,  went  to  hear 
Lincoln,  "A  plain  common  feller,  and  a  plain  honest  man, 
that  anj'body  but  a  fool  can  always  understand." 

Davis  was  in  many  ways  a  singular  man.  He  would  let 
a  case  go  on  apparently  oblivious  of  all  that  was  passing, 
absorbed  in  the  newspaper  or  apparently  asleep;  yet  when 
the  case  was  ready  to  be  submitted  he  knew  all  that  had 
happened  as  well  as  the  most  attentive  listener  at  the  bar. 
It  was  said  that  on  one  warm  summer  afternoon  in  a  tedious 
case  in  Bloomington,  lawyers,  clients,  jury,  and  attendants 
all  believed  that  Davis  was  in  a  sound  sleep  throughout  the 
case.  Mr.  Lincoln  was  counsel  on  one  side,  and  thinking 
that  Davis  had  been  asleep,  full  of  his  exuberant  humor, 
said:  "If  it  please  your  honor,  and  the  court  will  wake  up, 
we  are  ready  to  submit  our  cause  to  the  court  for  instruc- 
tions to  the  jury,  on  the  pleadings  and  testimony."  He  had 
made  no  oral  argument,  and  perhaps  did  not  intend  to  say 
more  than  he  had  done  in  the  examination  of  the  witnesses; 
but  thinking,  as  all  about  the  court  did,  that  the  judge 
had  been  in  such  deep  sleep  as  not  to  know  whether  Lincoln 
had  made  an  argument,  Lincoln  did  not  mention  this,  that 
they  might  enjoy  the  fun  of  catching  the  judge  while  he  was 
napping.  Davis  straightened  up  in  his  chair  at  once,  say- 
ing: "The  court  has  been  waiting  on  counsel  Lincoln  for  his 
argument  on  the  part  of  the  plaintiff  for  over  an  hour. 
This  has  not  been  made.  If  it  had  been,  the  court  could 
have  reposed  comfortably  the  whole  time;  but  as  the  case 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  341 

is  submitted  without  argument,  on  the  written  pleadings 
and  the  testimony,  the  jury  will  find,"  etc. 

The  laugh  was  on  Lincoln,  who  heartily  enjoyed  the 
merriment,  and  increased  it  by  saying,  "If  it  please  your 
honor,  I  will  be  pleased  to  make  an  argument  any  time, 
whenever  it  will  bring  comfort  and  repose  to  the  court." 
This  developed  the  truth  which  was  often  further  demon- 
strated, that  Davis  could  sit  for  hours  in  a  slumber  that  was 
real  to  all  appearances,  and  restful  to  him  as  such,  and  yet 
have  exact  knowledge  and  remembrance  of  the  course  of 
the  trial,  the  facts  and  proceedings,  so  that  he  was  aware 
of  all  that  had  happened,  and  could  in  exact  memory  in  time 
and  circumstances  correct  any  point  needing  his  attention 
afterwards  with  only  a  short  interruption. 

Davis  had  a  capacious  mind,  so  well  habilitated  and 
trained  to  his  work  that  his  faculty  of  remembering  was  in 
full  exercise  during  his  sleep.  None  of  the  lawyers  after  the 
above  incident  ever  tried  to  "wake  up  the  court,"  but  his 
faculty  to  hear  and  remember  during  sleep  was  ever  a  psy- 
chological wonder.  There  were  extreme  differences  in  many 
of  their  beliefs  between  Lincoln  and  Davis,  and  in  their  con- 
duct and  management  of  affairs  as  well;  still  they  were  in 
pleasant  and  constant  association  for  many  years,  in  perfect 
harmony,  without  disputes  of  consequence  or  any  that  ever 
troubled  many  besides  themselves.  This  harmony  was  with- 
out doubt  the  cause  of  Lincoln's  kind  and  agreeable  dispo- 
sition, and  his  constant  determination  to  contend  with  no 
one  wherever  it  could  be  avoided.  Hence  at  the  expense  of 
being  a  very  much  undiscovered  man  at  home,  his  whole  life 
was  so  shaped  as  to  make  all  others  about  him  comfortable, 
easy,  and  contented,  if  they  could  be,  without  disputing  or 
wrangling  on  his  part. 

An  incident  which  the  writer  remembers,  and  which 
occurred  some  time  early  in  1852,  disclosed  one  of  their 


342  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

striking  contrasts.  There  were  then  two  men,  Isaac  and 
John  Crumbaugh,  brothers,  thrifty  and  industrious  farmers 
in  McLean  Count}^  near  Bloomington.  They  were  large, 
bony,  and  muscular  men,  over  six  feet  in  stature,  Tennessee- 
ans,  very  much  alike  in  appearance,  manners,  habits,  dress, 
and  speech.  They  were  at  or  near  fifty  years  of  age,  men 
of  character,  "level-headed,"  and  respected  everywhere. 
This  was  one  of  the  years  when  Davis  was  a  candidate  for 
re-election.  He  had  no  opposition,  and  therefore  no  doubt 
of  election,  but,  as  any  reasonable  man  would,  he  desired 
the  cordial  support  of  both  of  the  Crumbaughs.  One  of 
them  was  a  straight  "Old-line  Whig."  The  other  was  one 
of  the  most  zealous  Jackson  Democrats  in  all  that  region. 
Both  of  them  had  known  the  old  hero  in  Tennessee,  and, 
as  remembered,  their  father  was  with  him  at  New  Orleans, 
at  least  in  some  of  his  military  service. 

Davis  had  given  them  advice  on  some  legal  business,  and 
had  frequently  had  dealings  with  them;  for  with  his  careful 
and  accumulating  habits  he  was  a  large  land-owner,  and 
owned  some  lands  and  farms  in  their  neighborhood.  Davis 
desired  the  support  of  both,  but  would  have  approached  the 
subject  to  each  one  very  differently  if  he  could  have  been 
sure  of  the  identity  when  he  met  them.  Their  close  resem- 
blance confused  him,  as  it  did  many  who  met  them  only 
occasionally,  and  there  was  the  further  difficulty,  when  they 
were  known,  of  knowing  which  was  Whig  and  which  was 
Democrat.  On  the  morning  in  question  one  of  them  was 
in  Davis's  office  early,  when  the  three  of  us  were  the  only 
ones  present.  Davis  wanted  to  know  of  the  writer,  and 
whispered  asking  which  he  was,  Whig  or  Democrat;  but  the 
writer,  knowing  as  little  as  Davis,  replied  that  he  only  knew 
that  it  was  Mr.  Crumbaugh.  So  the  easiest  way  for  Davis 
was  to  approach  the  subject  cautiously,  and  not  stir  up 
the  Jackson  Democrat,  if  it  was  he.  So  he  addressed  him 
pleasantly,   "Mr.   Crumbaugh,   my   term   as   judge   of   this 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  34  S 

circuit  closes  this  year,  and  I  will  be  thankful  for  the  sup- 
port of  my  neighbors."  His  manner  and  look  disclosed  at 
once  that  he  was  the  Jacksonian,  and  that  he  would  not 
only  not  "cordially  support  Davis,"  but  that  he  would  bo 
glad  to  help  defeat  him,  if  that  became  possible. 

The  man's  air  and  perfect  ease  disconcerted  Davis,  who, 
rising,  and  walking  up  and  down  the  room,  showed  unusual 
excitement  for  him;  for  he  had,  among  other  qualities,  re- 
markable control  of  his  temper.  However,  he  was  out  of 
humor,  and  far  away  from  the  natural  calm  and  suave  bear- 
ing he  was  so  accustomed  to;  and,  apparently  tormented 
by  Crumbaugh's  ease,  he  spoke  emphatically,  "Well,  I  do  n't 
know  that  any  one  will  be  a  candidate  against  me."  Crum- 
baugh  seemed  to  have  just  got  ready,  and,  in  effect,  taking 
up  Davis's  statement,  continued:  "Nuther  do  I;  but  as  we 
have  to  have  Whigs  fur  about  all  our  county  en'  naberhood 
offises,  I  fur  one  would  like  to  hev  a  leetle  choice  about  it; 
and  ef  we  could  elect  Abe,  Jedge,  I  'd  be  mity  glad.  He  'd 
make  a  good  one,  en'  while  I  'm  not  sa5dn'  nuthin'  agin' 
you,  I  think  he  's  one  uv  the  straitest  men  I  ever  knew,  ef 
he  is  a  Whig." 

Davis  seemed  to  have  entirely  lost  control  of  himself, 
and,  while  Crumbaugh  was  drawling  out  his  slow-spoken 
sentences,  he  had  wrought  himself  to  a  high  state  of  ex- 
citement. When  the  latter  closed,  he  brought  his  great, 
clenched  fist  down  on  the  table,  rattling  the  books,  rulers, 
papers,  and  other  loose  things  on  it,  like  a  few  rocks  in  an 
empty  wagon,  until  several  of  them  fell  to  the  floor,  and, 
rolling  about,  increased  the  confusion.  Unheeding  all  this 
at  the  second  or  third  stroke  of  his  fist,  he  roared  out:  "It 
will  not  do,  sir.  Lincoln,  although  a  great  man  in  our 
State,  and  a  good  one,  as  we  all  know,  deserving  more  than 
he  has  ever  received  or  has  been  offered  him,  is  not  fit  to 
be  a  judge.  His  ideas  of  property  rights  and  legislation 
protecting  them  are  too  loose  altogether;  and  we  all  know 


344  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

that  he  is  too  sympathetic  and  too  easily  influenced  to  be 
a  judge.  If  he  were  one,  there  would  only  be  one  side  in 
court,  and  that  would  be  that  of  the  poor,  thriftless  people, 
who  squander  uselessly  most  of  what  they  get  and  earn," 

Crumbaugh,  who  sat  not  at  all  disconcerted,  replied: 
"I  cum  mity  nigh  agreein'  with  you.  Lincoln  would  be 
the  pore  man's  friend.  He  alius  has  been,  en'  them  's  the 
ones  that  need  pertectin'  in  the  courts  and  everywhar  else 
in  the  country,  en'  you  need  n't  worry  about  the  other  not 
a-bein'  perfected;  fur  the  rich  folks  en'  them  in  big  places 
they  alius  take  good  keer  uv  themselves.  But  do  n't  git 
riled,  Jedge.  I  never  know  till  'lection  time  how  I  'm  goin' 
to  vote  when  only  Whigs  is  a-runnin'.  I  '11  tell  Ike  about 
it,  en'  I  know  he  '11  do  what  he  kin  fur  you ;  but  without 
disrespectin'  you,  or  anythin'  uv  thet  sort,  I  'd  like  mity 
well,  as  I  sed  afore,  to  see  Abe  'lected  jedge,  en'  help  to 
do  it." 

Mr.  Crumbaugh  was  out  and  gone  in  a  moment.  Davis 
stood  angered,  perplexed,  and  amazed;  but,  recovering  him- 
self pretty  soon,  he  said:  "Perhaps  I  was  excited.  Lincoln 
does  n't  live  in  this  district,  anyway ;  but  did  any  one  ever 
see  anything  more  provoking  than  Crumbaugh's  drawling, 
easy  way,  which  he  seemed  to  enjoy,  and  the  non-concern 
which-  he  showed  when  he  saw  how  he  had  thrown  me  off 
of  my  balance?  But  it's  all  true:  Lincoln,  good  man  as 
lie  is,  is  not  the  kind  of  man  for  a  judge;  nor  does  he  ever 
intend  to  be  a  judge.  He  says  so  himself,  but  it  will  be 
best  to  be  discreet  about  this  little  excitement,  and  not  to 
mention  it." 

Boy  as  I  was,  I  saw  all  that  was  involved  in  the  relation 
between  the  men,  but  agreed  with  Davis  that  it  was  best 
to  be  discreet  and  say  nothing  about  it.  I  was  not  excited, 
and  realized  what  Davis  did  not  seem  to  do,  when  I  remarked: 
"We  may  be  quiet  about  it;  but  what  about  Mr.  Crumbaugh, 
who  seemed  pleased  and  delighted,  and  went  off  in  a  humor 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  345 

that  you  might  expect  him  to  tell  all  about  it  to  the  first 
friend  he  meets?" 

"Well,  well,  that  is  so.  I  must  see  him  at  once.  Lin- 
coln might  hear  it,  and  not  understand  it.  I  '11  see  him 
right  away." 

And  Davis  swung  out  of  the  office  on  the  fastest  gait 
he  had  ever  made  up  the  street.  Crumbaugh  was  not  dif- 
ferent from  the  thousands  of  the  plain  country  people  who 
knew  and  loved  Lincoln  all  over  the  district;  and  if  Mr. 
Lincoln  had  lived  in  the  eighth  circuit,  and  not  in  Spring- 
field, Mr.  Crumbaugh  could  have  nominated  him  alone,  and 
the  people  would  have  elected  him  over  Davis  or  any  one 
else,  which  we  all  knew  by  that  time.  The  episode  was  much 
of  a  rebuke  to  Davis,  who  seemed,  in  the  future,  to  find 
further  differences  with  Mr.  Lincoln  on  political  matters. 
However,  Mr.  Lincoln  was  not  to  be  judge,  nor  governor, 
nor  commissioner  of  the  land-office.  Others  more  alert  in 
office-seeking  got  such  places,  usually  with  his  help.  He 
probably  could  have  been  nominated  by  the  Whigs  for 
judge  in  the  Springfield  Circuit,  but  it  was  so  strongly 
Democratic  in  1850  that  he  had  no  desire  for  the  contest. 
He  did  not  live  in  the  Bloomington  Circuit;  but  if  he 
had  taken  to  the  idea  of  being  judge  in  that,  he  could  have 
accomplished  it  in  some  way;  and  this  worried  Davis,  for 
he  understood  the  matter  better  than  any  other  man. 

Lincoln  went  through  the  campaign  of  1S48,  in  which 
Taylor  and  Fillmore,  against  Cass  and  Butler,  were  the 
Whig  and  Democratic  candidates,  respectively.  He  under- 
took it  with  more  energy,  more  finished  addresses,  and  bet- 
ter control  of  himself  as  a  speaker,  reasoner,  and  logical 
debater  than  he  had  reached  before  his  two-years'  discipline 
and  practice  in  Congress.  After  he  had  canvassed  New 
England,  he  made  one  or  two  speeches  in  New  York,  where 
he  formed  a  number  of  desirable  acquaintances,  which  were 
of  much  advantage  to  him.     He  returned  home,  and  made 


346  ABRAHAM  LIXCOLN. 

the  most  complete  canvass  he  had  ever  made  of  his  own 
State.  In  addition,  he  made  several  speeches  in  Indiana 
and  one  in  St.  Louis,  Mo. 

When  the  work  was  over,  he  had  reached  such  distinc- 
tion and  had  done  so  much  for  the  party  that  he  was  well 
entitled  and  should  have  been  invited  to  a  place  in  Presi- 
dent Taylor's  Cabinet;  for  in  Congress  and  through  a  po- 
litical campaign  that  made  Taylors  election  possible,  no 
man  had  done  more,  but  the  fact  of  Illinois  being  a  reliable 
Democratic  State  stood  as  an  unsurmountable  barrier;  and 
Presidents  in  those  days  selected  men  for  Cabinet  and  promi- 
nent places  from  the  shore-line  of  the  Atlantic  and  scarcely 
two  hundred  miles  inward. 

The  great  West  and  Southwest  have  occasionally  had 
a  President;  but  those  busy  fellows  down  East,  from  Cape 
Cod  to  Hatteras,  and  a  hundred  miles  or  two  inward,  with 
their  Jacksonian  emergency,  have  got  the  thousands  of  dis- 
posable offices,  contracts,  and  "the  plunder*'  of  every  Ad- 
ministration. 

When  the  campaign  was  over,  and  the  patronage  was 
being  distributed,  Mr.  Lincoln  was  not  favored  with  an  in- 
vitation into  Taylor's  Cabinet,  but  was  favored  in  being 
set  aside  as  a  candidate  for  commissioner  of  the  general 
land-office  at  Washington.  In  some  way,  by  the  advice  of 
friends,  he  became  a  candidate  for  the  office  mentioned, 
mostly  because  he  bore  the  expenses  of  his  campaign  and 
the  loss  of  several  months'  time  without  remuneration  of 
any  kind.  By  some  sort  of  office  dividing  and  distribution 
it  was  conceded  that  this  office  should  be  given  to  Illinois — 
a  fourth  or  fifth  rate  position  to  a  first-class  State,  but 
one  then  that  was  "away  out  West."  But  kind  fortune  and 
a  wise  Providence  that  never  deserted  him  kept  him  out 
of  the  four  years'  smothering  treadmill  of  official  place  in 
Washington  City,  that  would  have  taken  him  away  from 
the  people  and  entirely  out  of  his  line  of  work. 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  347 

There  were  four  candidates — Cyrus  Edwards,  J.  L.  D. 
Morrison,  late  one  of  the  gaUant  volunteers  from  Illinois, 
with  Taylor  in  Mexico,  who  helped  considerably  to  make 
Taylor  President;  Lincoln,  whom  M'e  have  mentioned;  and 
Justin  Butterfield,  of  Chicago,  who  was  neither  prominent 
nor  known  of  before  the  election  in  State  or  National  poli- 
tics. He  was  not  even  a  returned  volunteer,  but  neverthe- 
less he  got  the  office  through  the  Jersey  cabal.  He  was  an 
indefatigable  worker,  and  learned  just  how  to  make  the 
Washington  hitch. 

Declining  to  appoint  Lincoln  land  commissioner,  Tay- 
lor's Administration  offered  to  appoint  him  governor  of 
Oregon,  which  was  then  a  Territory;  but  he  had  the  good 
sense,  by  and  with  the  consent  of  his  wife,  to  decline.  Some 
of  his  best  friends  were  in  that  year  [1849]  shortsighted 
enough  to  urge  him  to  accept  the  place,  with  the  hope 
that  he  would  be  made  a  senator  from  it  as  soon  as  it  was 
admitted  as  a  State.  This  appeared  probable,  as  its  popu- 
lation was  rapidly  increasing.  Only  a  few  years  before  he 
probably  would  have  accepted  the  place;  for  it  was  true 
throughout  his  life  that  he  had  a  strong  ambition  to  be 
a  United  States  senator.  He  was  several  times  a  candidate, 
but  never  when  his  party  could  elect  him. 

In  the  Illinois  Legislature  following  Taylor's  election 
he  was  the  Whig  party's  candidate  against  General  Shields. 
The  General  had  recovered  from  his  severe  wound  at  Cerro 
Gordo,  and  was  nominated  and  elected  ITnited  States  sena- 
tor by  the  Democrats,  who  had  a  decided  majority. 

With  these  political  distributions  all  settled  and  out  of 
the  way,  after  the  active  political  campaigns,  which  he  could 
not  escape,  he  entered  upon  his  law  business  with  increased 
confidence  in  his  qualifications  and  the  indomitable  energy 
that  had  always  been  his  chief  reliance,  so  that  between 
1848  and  1858  he  prospered  in  his  profession  as  he  had 
never  done  before,  and  that,  too,  with  more  liberality  to  his 


348  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

clients  in  the  moderate  fees  he  accepted  for  his  valuable 
services. 

He  had  become  high  authority  at  the  bar,  and  in  almost 
every  important  suit  or  contention  in  the  circuit,  and  in 
man}^  outside,  he  was  usually  counsel  on  one  side  or  the 
other  in  the  leading  cases.  Having  his  choice,  usually  he 
took  the  side  on  which  the  equities  rested,  as  a  rule.  In 
this  course  of  practice  he  became  a  lawyer's  counsel  or  lead- 
ing counsel  in  every  vigorously-contested  case  in  many  terms, 
becoming  such  so  often  that  he  was  frequently  on  one  side 
or  the  other  of  almost  every  suit  in  the  county. 

His  fees,  as  we  have  stated,  were  always  moderate,  and 
it  happened  occasionally  that  of  the  fees  he  had  received 
through  other  lawyers  he  would  return  some  part  of  them, 
and,  in  some  cases,  all  of  them.  About  1849  he  returned 
something  like  fifty  dollars  in  one  term  to  several  clients 
in  the  above  way  in  suits  in  which  he  was  satisfied  with 
less  fees  than  his  associates  had  collected  and  divided  with 
him.  This  was  at  the  Bloomington  bar,  where  several  of 
them,  believing  that  he  was  improperly  lowering  his  fees 
for  justly-earned  legal  service,  submitted  it  to  Judge  Davis, 
with  the  request  that  he  admonish  Mr.  Lincoln  concerning 
his  very  low  fees,  which  they  claimed  discriminated  against 
the  younger  men  at  the  bar. 

Davis  believed  that  the  lawyers  were  right  and  that 
Lincoln  was  at  fault.  He  took  occasion  to  present  it  to 
Mr.  Lincoln  privately,  when,  in  substance,  the  following 
vigorously-expressed  and  quite  animated  consideration  of 
the  matter  occurred.  Davis  began  addressing  Mr.  Lincoln, 
saying:  "Several  members  of  this  bar  at  Bloomington,  who 
are  your  friends — those  who  consult  with  and  are  associ- 
ated with  you  in  their  suits — are,  as  I  believe,  justly  ag- 
grieved that  you  make  your  fees  lower  than  they  should 
be  for"  your  services,  which  necessarily  brings  all  their  fees 
lower.     This  works   constant  dissatisfaction,   especially  so 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  349 

with  the  younger  members,  who,  we  all  know,  receive  in- 
sufficient fees  for  comfortable  living,  and  are  often  driven 
to  other  work  temporarily."  Davis  continued:  "In  the  cor- 
dial friendship  which  has  always  prevailed,  I  mention  it  to 
you  only  because  several  younger  members  have  requested 
me,  and  I  have  come  to  believe  that  they  have  just  cause 
of  complaint,  and  that  you  should  act  in  harmony  with 
the  gentlemen  here  in  charging  fees  that  are  reasonable 
enough  to  enable  them  to  live  comfortably." 

However  much  Judge  Davis  may  have  intended  to  pre- 
sent these  objections  to  ]\Ir.  Lincoln  as  friendly  advice,  and 
not  as  a  remonstrance,  it  came  to  Lincoln  as  the  latter,  be- 
cause the  principal  complaint  was  that  his  part  of  his  fee 
in  the  settlement  of  an  estate  had  been  mostly  returned. 
In  that  case  Mr.  Lincoln  thought  that  no  more  than  a  nomi- 
nal fee  should  be  taken,  if  any;  for,  like  many  such  in  court, 
the  expenses  had  covered  about  all  of  the  available  assets, 
and  was  leaving  very  little  for  some  needy,  growing-up 
children. 

Mr.  Lincoln  replied,  not  wrought  up  to  any  unusual 
feeling,  but  in  a  manner  that  left  no  doubt  of  the  power 
and  resolution  behind  his  statement.  It  was  his  emphatic 
way  and  determination  in  which  he  always  addressed  any 
one  when  he  had  reached  a  conclusion,  not  appearing  to 
be  unreasonably  firm  or  the  least  obtrusive,  yet  so  fixed  in 
his  beliefs  that,  instinctiveh',  any  one  felt  that,  whatever 
others  might  do,  there  was  small  probability  of  change  on 
his  part.  He  sat  down  and  assumed,  if  he  did  not  feel, 
composure,  and  talked  in  his  umnistakable  high  key  and 
most  impressive  tone  of  voice: 

"If  it  please  Your  Honor,  I  am  aware  that  the  young 
lawyers  are  poor,  and  several  of  the  older  ones,  like  my- 
self, make  no  more  than  a  living,  and  at  least  do  no  better 
than  men  of  equal  capacity  in  other  occupations.  It  is 
not  long  since  I  went  through  all  the  grinding,  waiting,  and 


350  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

pinching  of  a  3'oung  man  with  no  business  to  speak  of,  and 
I  assure  you  that  I  am  sincerely  sorry  for  all,  and,  knowing 
well  the  sort  of  struggle,  sympathize  with,  often  to  the 
extent  of  helping  them  as  I  can.  But  the  people  all  about 
us  are  poorer  even  than  these  waiting  lawyers.  They  came 
West,  as  a  rule,  to  earn  their  homes,  not  to  buy  them;  for 
there  were  very  few  of  them,  indeed,  who  brought  more 
than  a  team  of  horses,  or  oxen,  and  a  wagon,  which  contained 
the  belongings  of  the  entire  family.  They  are  still  in  the 
work  of  earning  their  homes  or  making  them  habitable.  I 
passed  through  the  hard  labor  of  it  myself  not  many  years 
since,  and  have  at  this  day  a  lively  recollection  of  the  hard 
work  and  privations  which  they  can  not  escape.  I  have  an 
earnest  interest  in  the  young  men  of  our  bar  here,  many 
of  Avhom  are  doing  very  well;  but  so  long  as  I  live  among 
the  good  people  about  here,  who  have  always  favored  me 
beyond  my  expectations,  they  must  be  considered  as  much, 
or  more,  than  the  young  lawyers.  I  shall  attend  to  the 
people's  business  in  the  courts,  intrusted  to  me,  for  moder- 
ate fees,  such  as  I,  on  information,  conclude  that  they  are 
able  to  pay,  and  for  which  I  can  afford  to  work;  and,  with 
due  respect  to  you  and  these  gentlemen,  whenever  it  be- 
comes a  fact  that  I  can  not  fix  the  amount  of  my  remunera- 
tion in  any  case,  or  the  part  of  it  that  belongs  to  me,  satis- 
factorily, I  will  find  business  elsewhere,  and  not  further 
trouble  you  nor  them." 

Judge  Davis  was  nonplused,  surprised,  and  chagrined, 
for  one  reason:  that  he  had  been  a  referee  in  like  cases 
many  times,  with  entire  agreement  as  to  his  findings  and 
settlements  of  them;  but  here  was  a  man  who  was  going 
to  have  his  own  way,  and  whom,  above  all  others,  he  did  not 
Avant  to  drive  away  from  his  circuit  or  from  Bloomington,  if 
indeed  any  one  had  such  desire;  for  Davis  himself,  in  the 
reserved  condition  in  which  he  lived,  a  judicial,  impartial 
man,  with   few   acquaintances,   in   almost   isolated  reserve 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  351 

from  the  general  public,  -with  few  associates  and  no  inti- 
mate ones  outside  of  the  lawyers,  had  higher  apprecia- 
tion of  Lincoln,  perhaps,  than  any  one  in  the  circuit.  So 
he  hastily  changed  his  manner,  saying:  "Mr.  Lincoln,  I  only 
sought  to  advise  you.  Lender  no  circumstances  would  I 
think  of  doing  more.  You  must  take  this  as  friendly  ad- 
vice concerning  these  young  men,  and  do,  as  we  all  wish, 
the  very  best  we  can  for  them.  You  are  not  to  entertain 
the  thought  of  leaving  the  bar  here  or  the  circuit.  No 
one  is  more  welcome  in  it,  and  no  one  will  do  more  to 
make  it  pleasant  and  agreeable  for  you  to  remain  than 
myself." 

While  upon  this  topic,  it  will  be  appropriate  to  insert 
the  tribute  which  Judge  Davis  wrote  on  the  work  and  char- 
acter of  Mr.  Lincoln  shortly  after  his  death.  While  several 
of  the  statements  are  at  fault  on  the  subject  of  Mr.  Lin- 
coln's reading  and  information,  it  is  nevertheless  a  sincere 
and  worthy  offering,  in  illustration  of  the  mind  and  char- 
acter of  the  man  whom  he  knew  so  well: 

"I  enjoyed  for  over  twenty  years  the  personal  friendship 
of  Mr.  Lincoln.  We  were  admitted  to  the  bar  about  the 
same  time,  and  traveled  for  many  years  what  is  known  in 
Illinois  as  the  Eighth  Judicial  Circuit.  In  1848  I  first 
went  on  the  bench.  The  circuit  embraced  fourteen  coun- 
ties, and  Mr.  Lincoln  went  with  the  court  to  every  county. 
Railroads  were  not  then  in  use,  and  our  mode  of  travel 
was  either  on  horseback  or  in  buggies.  This  simple  life 
he  loved,  preferring  it  to  the  practice  of  law  in  a  city,  where, 
although  the  remuneration  would  be  greater,  the  oppor- 
tunity would  be  less  for  mixing  up  with  the  great  body  of 
the  people,  whom  he  loved,  and  who  loved  him. 

"Mr.  Lincoln  was  transferred  from  the  bar  of  that  cir- 
cuit to  the  office  of  President  of  the  United  States,  hav- 
ing been  without  official  position  since  he  left  Congress  in 
1849.    In  all  the  elements  that  constitute  the  great  lawyer 


352  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

he  had  few  equals.  He  was  great,  both  at  Nisi  Prius  and 
before  an  Appellate  tribunal.  He  seized  the  strong  points 
of  a  cause,  and  presented  them  with  clearness  and  great 
compactness.  His  mind  was  logical,  and  he  did  not  indulge 
in  extraneous  discussion.  Generalities  and  platitudes  had 
no  charms  for  him.  An  unfailing  vein  of  humor  never  de- 
serted him,  and  he  was  able  to  claim  the  attention  of  the 
court  and  Jury,  when  the  cause  was  the  most  uninteresting, 
by  the  appropriateness  of  his  anecdotes. 

"His  power  of  comparison  was  large,  and  he  rarely  failed 
in  a  legal  discussion,  to  use  that  mode  of  reasoning.  The 
frame-work  of  his  mental  and  moral  being  was  honesty, 
and  a  wrong  cause  was  poorly  defended  by  him.  The  abil- 
ity which  some  eminent  lawyers  possess  of  explaining  away 
the  bad  points,  b}^  ingenious  sophistry,  was  denied  him. 
In  order  to  bring  into  activity  his  great  powers,  it  was  nec- 
essary that  he  should  be  convinced  of  the  right  and  justice 
of  the  matter  which  he  advocated.  When  so  convinced, 
whether  the  cause  was  great  or  small,  he  was  usually  suc- 
cessful. He  read  law  books  but  little,  except  when  the 
cause  in  hand  made  it  necessary;  yet  he  was  usually  self- 
reliant,  depending  on  his  own  resources,  and  rarely  con- 
sulting his  brother  lawyers  either  in  the  management  of  his 
cause  or  on  the  legal  questions  involved. 

"Mr.  Lincoln  was  the  fairest  and  most  accommodating 
of  practitioners,  granting  all  favors  which  were  consistent 
with  his  duty  to  his  client,  and  rarely  availing  himself  of 
an  unwary  oversight  of  his  adversaries.  He  hated  ^\Tong 
and  oppression  everywhere,  and  many  a  man  whose  fraudu- 
lent conduct  was  undergoing  review  in  a  court  of  justice 
has  writhed  under  his  terrific  indignation  and  rebukes.  He 
was  the  most  simple  and  unostentatious  of  men  in  his  hab- 
its, having  few  wants,  and  those  easily  supplied. 

"To  his  honor  be  it  said  that  he  never  took  from  a  client, 
even  when  his  cause  was  gained,  more  than  he  thought  the 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  353 

services  were  worth  and  the  client  could  reasonably  afford 
to  pay.  The  people  where  he  practiced  were  not  rich,  and 
his  charges  were  always  small.  When  he  was  elected  Presi- 
dent, I  question  whether  there  was  a  lawyer  in  the  circuit 
who  had  been  at  the  bar  so  long  a  time  whose  means  were 
not  larger. 

"It  did  not  seem  to  be  one  of  the  purposes  of  his  life 
to  accumulate  a  fortune.  In  fact,  outside  of  his  profession, 
he  had  no  knowledge  of  the  way  to  make  money,  and  he 
never  even  attempted  it.  Mr.  Lincoln  was  loved  by  his 
brethren  of  the  bar,  and  no  body  of  men  will  grieve  more 
at  his  death  or  pay  more  sincere  tribute  to  his  memory. 
His  presence  on  the  circuit  was  watched  for  with  interest, 
and  never  failed  to  produce  joy  or  hilarity.  When  casually 
absent,  the  spirits  of  both  bar  and  people  were  depressed. 
He  was  not  fond  of  litigation,  and  would  compromise  a  law 
suit  whenever  it  was  practicable." 

Judge  Drummond,  one  of  the  ablest,  most  experienced, 
and  impartial  jurists  in  his  day,  said  of  Lincoln:  "With  a 
probity  of  character  known  to  all,  wdth  an  intuitive  insight 
into  the  human  heart,  with  a  clearness  of  statement  which 
was  in  itself  an  argument,  with  uncommon  power  of  felicity 
of  illustration,  often  it  is  true  of  a  plain  and  homely  kind; 
and  with  that  sincerity  and  earnestness  of  manner  which 
carried  conviction,  he  was  perhaps  one  of  the  most  success- 
ful jury  lawyers  we  ever  had  in  the  State.  He  always  tried 
a  case  fairly  and  honestly.  He  never  intentionally  misrep- 
resented the  evidence  of  a  witness  nor  the  argument  of  an 
opponent. 

*^e  met  both  squarely;  and  if  he  could  not  explain  the 
one  or  the  other  substantially,  admitted  it.  He  never  mis- 
stated the  law  according  to  his  own  intelligent  view  of  it. 
Such  was  the  transparent  candor  and  sincerity  of  his  na- 
ture that  he  could  not  well  or  strongly  argue  the  side  or 
a  cause  that  he  thought  wrong.  Of  course,  he  felt  his  duty 
23 


354  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

to  say  what  could  be  said,  and  leave  the  decision  to  others; 
but  there  could  be  seen  in  such  cases  the  inward  struggle 
of  his  own  mind.  In  trying  a  case  he  might  occasionally 
dwell  too  long  upon  or  give  too  much  importance  to  an 
inconsiderable  point;  but  this  was  the  exception,  and  gen- 
erally he  went  straight  to  the  citadel  of  the  cause  or  ques- 
tion, and  struck  home,  knowing,  if  that  were  done,  the 
outworks  would  necessarily  follow. 

"He  could  hardly  be  called  very  learned  in  his  profes- 
sion, and  yet  he  rarely  tried  a  cause  without  fully  under- 
standing the  law  applicable  to  it;  and  I  have  no  hesitation 
in  saying  he  was  one  of  the  ablest  lawyers  I  have  ever  known. 
If  he  was  forcible  with  a  jury,  he  was  equally  so  with  the 
court.  He  detected,  with  unerring  sagacity,  the  weak  point 
of  an  opponent's  argument,  and  pressed  his  own  views  with 
overwhelming  strength.  His  efforts  were  quite  unequal, 
and  it  might  happen  that  he  would  not,  on  some  occasion, 
strike  one  as  at  all  remarkable.  But  let  him  be  thoroughly 
roused,  and  let  him  feel  that  he  was  right  and  that  some 
principle  was  involved  in  his  cause,  and  he  would  come  out 
with  an  earnestness  of  conviction,  a  power  of  argument,  a 
wealth  of  illustration,  that  I  have  never  seen  surpassed." 

These  able  jurists,  in  their  comments,  have  truly  repre- 
sented him,  save  in  the  one  feature  in  which  he  was  so 
continuously  misrepresented,  in  which  Davis  says,  "He  read 
law  books  but  little,  except  w^hen  the  cause  in  hand  made 
it  necessary."  Drummond  says,  "He  could  hardly  be  called 
very  learned  in  his  profession,  and  yet  he  rarely  tried  a 
cause  Avithout  fully  understanding  the  law  applicable  to 
it."  Both  these  men  were  eminent  jurists  and  able  in  their 
profession;  but,  as  judges  usually  do,  they  were  intent  to 
seek  defects  even  in  the  high  tribute  and  commendation 
they  were  endeavoring  to  pay  to  his  great  character.  The 
full,  free,  and  the  highest  approbation  they  could  write  sets 
aside  the  high  value  of  their  opinions  about  his  reading  or 


TEE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  355 

learning.    Drummond  conspicuously  remarks  that  "he  never 
misstated  the  law." 

It  has  been  treated  before,  but  it  should  be  observed 
again  here,  that  the  practitioners  at  the  bar  whom  he  met 
and  contended  with  in  the  courts  and  the  able  statesmen 
whom  he  was  constantly  meeting  were  much  better  able 
to  understand  the  scope  of  his  reading  and  the  extent  and 
nature  of  his  learning  than  even  these  friendly  judges, 
whose  habits  and  restricted  lines  of  study  made  them  re- 
viewers of  what  they  thought  was  lacking  in  a  man  or  cause. 
The  defects  which  these  commentators  first  assert  are  all 
explained  away  in  their  concurrent  testimony,  that  he  was 
about  the  best-prepared  lawyer  to  take  care  of  causes  and 
actions  whom  they  ever  knew. 

If  a  man  could  do  that  much,  as  Lincoln  surely  did,  and 
as  they  as  surely  said,  surrounded  and  met  and  contended 
with,  as  he  was,  by  the  most  learned,  the  brightest,  the 
most  and  best  thoroughly  informed,  then  Lincoln  possessed 
that  which  was  better  than  mere  classic  language  and  more 
useful  than  wide  and  unused  reading.  He  had  this  high 
capacity,  genius,  a  mind  beyond  human  measurement. 
Nevertheless,  as  sure  as  he  possessed  the  godlike  genius, 
which  has  been  given  so  few  men  in  all  the  world's  history, 
he  got  the  learning  also,  possessed  himself  of  it  in  his  own 
persevering  way,  and  in  every  case  at  bar  or  in  counsel,  in 
legislation  or  in  executive  council,  he  was  never  defective 
in  the  required  knowledge  or  course  of  procedure,  and 
more  emphatically  so  with  and  before  the  people  who  knew 
him  best  and  trusted  him  most.  And  who  of  all  our  own 
or  the  great  world's  leaders  equaled  or  surpassed  him? 

Davis's  contribution  contains  the  truthful  statement, 
plainly  written,  of  his  highest  qualification  and  the  basis 
of  his  enduring  place  in  the  hearts  of  men,  saying  that  in  a 
city  "the  opportunity  would  be  less  for  mixing  with  the  great 
body  of  the  people,  whom  he  loved,  and  who  loved  him." 


356  ABE  AH  AM  LINCOLN: 

He  delighted  being  with  the  people,  and  being  one  of  them, 
not  to  find  some  way  to  make  a  great  fortune  out  of  them, 
but  in  the  work  of  helping,  advising,  earing  for,  getting 
them  out  of  trouble,  and  helping  them  to  get  the  last  pay- 
ment made  on  their  homesteads.  Lincoln  was  a  terror  to  the 
'^and-sharks,"  who  prospered,  while  the  hardy  pioneer  was 
compelled  to  push  westward,  seeking  a  home.  He  helped 
and  saved  many;  but  he  and  all  those  inclined  to  help  could 
not  save  all  of  them,  for  the  schemes  of  these  cormorants, 
in  all  their  devious  ways,  were  past  finding  out,  and  could 
not  be  wholly  prevented.  They  seemed,  at  times,  to  be 
so  thick  in  and  about  the  United  States  land-offices  that 
they  were,  in  some  of  them,  like  the  flies  in  Egypt. 

He  was  educated,  learned,  and  sufficiently  informed  to 
hold  the  place  he  did  at  the  Springfield  bar,  where  he  met 
and  tried  his  causes  in  court,  and  the  same  in  his  conten- 
tions elsewhere,  with  Major  Stuart,  Judge  Logan,  Governor 
Edwards  and  his  son,  Governor  Eeynolds,  "the  old  ranger," 
as  keen  as  any  fox;  Judge  Douglas,  the  peer  and  associate 
of  Calhoun,  Webster,  Benton,  and  Clay;  Judges  Sidney 
Breese  and  Samuel  H.  Treat,  jurists  for  a  lifetime;  Shields 
and  Hardin,  brave  and  capable  men;  and  Edward  D.  Baker, 
citizen,  senator,  and  soldier,  brilliant,  blazing,  dazzling  in 
description  as  a  fiery  meteor,  smoothest,  softest,  and  still 
the  most  stiletto-tongued  soldier  who  ever  charmed  the 
Senate. 

But  why  should  any  one  doubt  Lincoln's  surpassing 
greatness,  his  intellect,  and  his  majestic  strength,  or  his 
knowledge  and  preparation,  that  was  equal  to  any  undertak- 
ing he  ever  made?  There  were  Yates  and  Oglesby  and  Cul- 
lom — all  to  be  governors — Trumbull,  Browning,  Palmer, 
Logan,  McClernand,  Prentiss,  Wm.  N".  Coler,  John  Went- 
worth,  Arnold,  Judd,  Hurlbut,  Judge  Gillespie,  Dubois, 
Hatch,  and  JVIilton  Hay,  of  Illinois,  and  Henry  S.  Lane, 
Daniel  Voorhees,  and  Oliver  P.  Morton,  of  Indiana,  and 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  357 

Frank  P.  Blair  and  Edward  Bates,  of  Missouri.  These 
and  a  full  hundred  more  in  the  West,  who  should  all  be 
remembered,  knew  Lincoln  well,  and  knew  the  truth  of 
John  Hanks's  early  observation  that  "the  fellers  who  think 
they  can  take  any  unfair  advantage  or  get  ahead  of  Abe, 
and  they  know  more  'n  he  does,  vv^hen  he  sets  himself  at  it 
and  gets  down  to  study,  and  puts  his  mind  to  do,  are  sure 
to  get  left." 

Lincoln  grew  and  prospered  and  became,  not  only  dis- 
tinguished, but  eminent  and  wise,  as  his  capacious  mind 
gathered  and  stored  whatever  was  worth  the  saving; 
while  all  of  New  England,  New  York,  and  New  Jersey,  with 
their  Adamses,  Sewards,  Weeds,  Greeleys,  and  Freling- 
huysens,  could  raise  distinguished,  well-learned,  and  capable 
men,  but  could  not  and  did  not  produce  such  a  man  and 
leader,  and  for  the  very  good  cause  that  God  alone,  in  his 
wisdom,  raises  up  such  men  wheresoever  he  will. 

In  their  pettishness  and  contracted  shore-line  vision, 
that  could  see  nothing  west  of  the  Alleghanies,  some  of  the 
cultured,  college-bred  men  said  that  Lincoln  was  ''an  ig- 
noi*ant,  unlettered  man."  As  they  knew  nothing  about 
him — at  least,  not  enough  to  authorize  judgment  of  the 
man  or  what  he  knew — they  merely  invented  what  they 
told.  The  story,  that  never  had  basis  in  truth,  has  been 
kept  going  by  college-bred  and  ill-bred  men  ever  since, 
whose  information  would  be  enlarged  more  than  it  ever 
has  been  if  their  minds  could  be  open  to  know  the  real  char- 
acter, wisdom,  comprehensive  information,  and  the  true 
greatness  of  Abraham  Lincoln.  The  men  who  worked  day 
after  day  in  the  hard  work  of  settlements,  and  sometimes 
with  very  much  excited  litigants,  and  in  business  adjust- 
ments of  large  properties,  never  for  a  moment  considered 
him  lacking  in  any  information  or  learning  that  was  neees- 
sai-y  to  manage  the  most  intricate  and  complicated  business 
that  came  into  our  court  for  adjudication. 


358  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

Until  college  training  and  study  can  produce  such  men 
as  Washington,  Franklin,  Andrew  Jackson,  Zachary  Taylor, 
Horace  Greeley,  Fulton,  Ericsson,  Abraham  Lincoln,  and 
Thomas  Edison,  it  will  be  seemly,  wise,  and  more  in  the 
line  of  common  sense  not  to  write  down  men  as  ignorant 
who  have  better  preparation  for  the  work  they  are  in  than 
the  men  of  the  colleges  and  universities,  who  have  had 
the  special  training,  but  who  never  had  the  talent.  It  will 
be  well  to  consider,  also,  that  many  men  get  better  prepa- 
ration for  the  work  of  their  lives  outside  of  the  colleges 
than  in  them,  and  that  the  very  best  that  colleges  or  higher- 
named  schools  can  do  is  so  to  train  the  youth,  as  they  gain 
knowledge  through  their  few  years  of  student  life,  that 
they  may  have  the  industry,  application,  and  disciplined 
methods  of  study  and  investigation  ground  into  them  by 
which  they  may  afterwards  become  scholars  if  their  lives 
are  devoted  to  scholarly  pursuits.  This  might  help  to  stop 
the  rant  that  a  young  man  or  woman  comes  out  of  a  four- 
years'  course  a  scholar,  when,  in  truth,  they  have  barely 
acquired  the  means  by  which  they  may  gain  an  education. 

Mr.  Lincoln  grew  up  to  life  and  business  and  became  a 
learned  and  wise  man  among  such,  and  maintained  his  po- 
sition as  he  rose  in  knowledge,  wisdom,  and  enlightened 
judgment.  In  the  old  eighth  circuit  there  were  many  men 
of  learning  and  high  capacity,  many  of  whom  were  trained 
in  colleges,  and  many  were  not;  and  it  would  be  strange 
to  find  any  one  of  them  who  ever  had  a  reasonable  belief 
that  Lincoln  was  in  any  sense  an  unlearned  and  unlettered 
man.  These  stories  sprang  up  farther  East,  where  years 
were  devoted  to  languages  never  used,  where  Greek  philos- 
ophy and  forgotten  legends  and  theories  constitute  a  cer- 
tain kind  of  education,  but  which,  to  busy,  active  men  on 
this  Western  Continent  is  much  less  instructive  and  useful 
than  a  better  knowledge  of  the  history  of  the  great  Missis- 
sippi Valley  would  be. 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  359 

What  men  need  as  education  is  training,  knowledge  of 
and  instruction  in  the  business  or  occupation  in  which  they 
must  spend  their  lives.  At  the  Bloomington  bar  there 
were  David  Davis,  Gridley,  and  Leonard  Swett,  the  emi- 
nent and  indefatigable  criminal  law  pleader,  who  became 
reno^Tied  as  among  the  best  pleaders  of  his  time,  whose 
skill  and  tireless  energy  saved  more  men  from  execution 
than  any  American  lawyer;  there  was  McDougal,  afterwards 
a  senator  from  California,  learned,  eloquent,  and  honored; 
there  was  Jesse  Fell,  able,  clear-headed,  and  an  old-time 
Abolitionist;  there  were  Wickizer,  quick,  able,  and  excitable; 
McWilliams,  a  trained  and  able  pleader,  from  jSTew  York; 
Lawrence  Weldon,  a  bright,  eloquent  young  man  from  Ohio, 
who  always  "lighted  into  his  case  in  time,  and  surprised  us 
some  way" — a  fine  pleader,  who  has  long  since  been  snugly 
tucked  away  in  one  of  the  dusty  judgeships  at  Washington 
City;  and  C.  H.  Moore,  of  Clinton,  a  thrifty,  careful  busi- 
ness man  of  more  than  fifty  years'  experience  and  success. 

At  the  TJrbana  bar,  in  Champaign  County,  there  were 
Colonel  Wm.  N.  Coler,  soldier  of  two  wars,  and  one  of  the 
most  competent  and  successful  la^^^ers  and  business-men 
of  our  State;  Judge  Wm.  Somers,  a  lifetime  able,  careful, 
and  prudent  lawyer  and  a  straight  Jackson  Democrat  for 
more  than  sixty  years.  There  were  also  at  the  same  bar 
Colonel  James  Wolfe,  who  became  a  gallant  soldier 
in  the  war  for  the  Union;  Thompson  Webber,  a  careful, 
prudent,  and  very  well-informed  man;  Judge  J.  0.  Cunning- 
ham, for  over  forty  years  one  of  the  most  careful  and  re- 
liable practitioners,  who  is  still  learning  and  plodding  on; 
and  James  B.  McKinley,  a  clear-headed  lawyer  and  a  busy 
man  of  affairs  in  several  counties.  At  the  Danville  bar  there 
was  Judge  Oliver  Davis,  who  succeeded  Judge  David  Davis 
when  President  Lincoln  promoted  the  latter  to  the  United 
States  Supreme  Court.  He  was  an  able,  learned  man,  and 
became  an  acceptable  successor  to  David  Davis.    There  was, 


360  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

too,  the  imj)etuoiis,  daring  Wai'd  H.  Lamon,  who  became 
intimate  with  Mr.  Lincoln,  went  with  him,  and  remained 
with  him  in  Washington  throughout  his  life. 

There  were  these,  and  a  hundred  or  more  who  are  well 
entitled  to  recognition.  Some  have  passed  from  memory, 
and  some  are  passed  for  want  of  space  who  were  meritorious 
and  successful  men  of  learning,  capacity,  business  sense, 
and  comjDetency  that  made  them  accredited  and  able  counsel 
in  one  of  the  richest  basins  and  among  the  most  industrious- 
turned  peoples  in  the  world. 

Some  time  during  1850,  Mr.  Lincoln  was  selected  to  repri- 
mand a  young  man  at  the  Bloomington  bar  who  had  disclosed 
valuable  information  to  a  defendant  whose  counsel  he  be- 
came— information  which  he  had  obtained  and  was  using 
of  the  cause  at  action  from  his  preceptor's  office  while  he 
was  there  as  a  law  student,  his  preceptor  being  counsel  for 
the  plaintiff.  The  young  man,  on  learning  that  an  action 
to  disbar  him  would  be  brought,  and  likely  prevail — for 
the  facts  were  indisputable — begged  the  leniency  of  the 
court,  agreeing  to  leave  the  bar  and  the  county,  and  to 
reform,  if  he  were  allowed  to  do  so  without  open  and  re- 
corded dismissal. 

The  judge,  Davis,  in  conclusion,  determined  that  he 
should  be  reproved  in  open  court,  after  which  he  would 
have  permission  to  withdraw,  and  selected  Lincoln  to  ad- 
minister the  reproof,  whose  manner  and  appearance  in  call- 
ing the  young  man  to  the  bar  bore  evidence  in  the  tone, 
look,  and  determination  of  condemnation  and  sorrow  with 
it,  and  in  its  deliverance,  that  can  in  no  wise  be  described 
or  written. 

It  was,  in  part,  as  kept  in  very  impressive  memory:  "Sir, 
you  have  polluted  the  ermine  of  this  court  of  justice,  that 
should  be  as  pure  and  spotless  as  the  driven  snow  or  the 
light  of  the  brightest  stars  in  the  firmament.  Justice  is 
not  a  fiction;  and  though  it  is  often  held  to  be  a  sentiment 


THE  MEN  OF  JUS  TIME.  361 

onh',  or  a  remote  ideal,  it  is  real,  and  it  is  bounded  and 
guarded  on  all  sides  by  the  strongest  powers  of  Divine  and 
human  law.  The  court  will  not  pronounce  j^our  disbar- 
ment; you  have  done  that  yourself.  The  people  will  trust 
no  one,  without  sincere  reformation,  who  has  been  wrong 
and  reckless,  as  you  admit,  in  one  of  the  most  confiding  rela- 
tions that  ever  exist  between  men. 

"A  client  is  in  court  by  his  lawj^er  so  often,  and  the 
custom  so  generally  prevails  that  if  he  is  not  represented 
by  honorable  and  trustworthy  counsel,  the  right  is  of  little 
value,  and  he  is  virtually  denied  the  justice  to  which  our 
laws  entitle  him.  The  Wisest  has  said  that  'no  man  can 
serve  two  masters.'  In  your  default  you  have  used  the  infor- 
mation obtained  in  your  preceptor's  office  while  he  was 
counsel  for  the  plaintiff.  You  have  done  so  when  you  were 
counsel  for  the  defendant,  his  adversary  in  the  action,  using 
such  information  surreptitiously  and  without  permission  of 
the  plaintiff,  who  fully  confided  in  your  preceptor  as  counsel 
and  in  you  because  of  your  relation  of  law  student  in  his 
office.  In  this  way  you  have  been  using  the  knowledge 
which  you  have  gained  from  both  parties  in  a  way  that  no 
faithful  and  conscientious  lawyer  should  do,  and  certainly 
very  much  to  the  detriment  of  one  of  them. 

"A  lawyer  who  becomes  by  his  admission  to  the  bar  of 
any  of  our  courts  part  of  the  judicial  establishment  of  the 
land,  should  have  integrity  beyond  question  or  reproach. 
Courts  of  law  as  of  equity  can  sustain  no  other  without  them- 
selves becoming  venal  and  corrupt.  A  tarnished  lawyer  is 
a  homeless  man.  Therefore  seek  until  you  find  a  real  refor- 
mation in  honest  work,  and  the  court  will  approve." 

The  young  man  took  the  kind-hearted  man's  advice  in  its 
highest  meaning,  and  accomplished  a  sincere  reformation, 
becoming  in  another  State  a  useful  and  honorable  member 
of  the  profession.  Lincoln's  object  was  attained  in  the 
administration    of    the    rebuke.      His    condemnation    was 


362  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

strong  and  impressive,  but  at  the  same  time  his  genuine 
sympathy  for  the  man  who  was  inclined  to  reform  was  the 
strongest  and  most  pathetic  part  of  this  unequaled  reproof, 
which  wrought  out  the  work  he  intended  it  should.  When  he 
had  finished  there  was  deep  silence  until  it  was  broken  by 
Mr.  Lincoln,  who,  in  taking  the  young  man's  hand,  said, 
"We  bid  thee  God-speed  in  a  work  that  will  make  you  a 
better  man." 


CHAPTER  XYI. 

THE  annexation  of  Texas  and  the  acquisition  of  the  large 
territory  from  Mexico,  followed  by  the  discovery  of 
gold,  silver,  and  many  other  valuable  minerals  in  it, 
and  the  admission  of  California  as  a  free  State  in  September, 
1850,  reopened  the  slavery  question  as  effectually  as  though 
there  had  never  been  an  agreement  or  settlement.  In  the 
settlement  at  the  adoption  of  the  Constitution  slavery  was 
in  effect  left  to  the  States  for  their  control,  but  it  per- 
mitted the  enumeration  of  three-fifths  of  the  colored  races, 
except  Indians,  including  slaves  and  freedmen  of  all  shades, 
in  making  up  population  and  ratios  for  members  of  Congress, 
and  electors  for  President  and  Vice-President.  Thus  the 
salveholding  States  were  allowed  representation  for  three 
out  of  five  of  their  slaves,  and  that  much  political  power, 
as  the  first  adjustment  of  the  slave  system  to  our  laws. 

The  great  extension  of  slave-territory  was  made  under 
the  Louisiana  purchase  of  1803,  and  the  Spanish  cession  of 
Florida  territory  in  1819,  ending  in  the  admission  of  Missouri 
as  a  slave  State  in  1820,  with  the  agreed  condition  or  pro- 
viso that  slavery  should  not  be  extended  in  the  future  north 
of  the  south  line  of  Missouri,  36  degrees,  30  minutes.  This 
was  the  second  settlement  of  the  territorial  limits  and 
boundaries  of  slavery,  and  the  contravention  of  the  avowed 
policy  of  the  founders  of  the  Nation,  who  in  the  cession  of 
the  Northwest  Territory  endeavored  to  establish  a  precedent 
that  slavery  should  not  be  extended  into  any  territory  be- 
longing to  the  United  States,  as  stated  in  the  previous  con- 
sideration of  the  Virginia  cession  of  1787. 

363 


364  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

Late  in  1845,  Nimmo  Browne  was  in  Springfield,  Illinois, 
finishing  up  his  work  on  the  capitol  building,  making  final 
settlement.  President  Polk  had  been  inaugurated  in  March, 
and  in  July,  General  Taylor  had  embarked  from  New  Orleans 
with  a  militia  force  of  some  fifteen  hundred.  At  the  time 
of  his  writing,  about  October,  he  had  landed  and  had  control 
of  the  mouth  and  west  side  of  the  Eio  Grande  River,  thereby 
taking  forcible  possession  of  Mexican  territory,  because  up 
to  that  time  the  Texans  only  claimed  territory  east  of  the 
Neuces  River,  which  is  about  one  hundred  miles  east  of  the 
Eio  Grande. 

While  there,  just  before  leaving,  Browne  held  an  ani- 
mated discussion  with  Judge  Douglas,  who  asked  Browne, 
"Do  you  still  adhere  to  your  anti-slavery  notions,  and  what 
do  you  think  of  the  situation?"  He  replied:  "I  am  an 
Abolitionist,  more  pronounced  than  ever,  if  anything,  as 
fanatical  as  you  choose  to  have  or  represent  me.  The  Presi- 
dent, as  was  expected,  is  a  supple  servant  of  the  slave- 
power.  He  has  provoked  war  by  the  hostile  seizure  of 
Mexican  territor}-,  and  evidently  intends  to  carry  it  on 
against  Mexico,  for  which  there  can  be  no  other  reason  than 
to  enlarge  the  domain  and  power  of  slavery. 

"I  am,  of  course,  not  as  well  qualified  to  express  opinions 
as  one  to  the  manner  born,  but  there  can  be  no  doubt  that 
President  Polk  has  levied  war  against  a  friendly  Power.  I 
am  surprised  at  the  apathy  and  listlessness  of  the  free  people 
of  the  Northern  States,  who  are  being  deceived  year  after 
year  in  what  I  call  twaddling  debates  and  faithless  compro- 
mises, which  are  mere  pretenses  that  the  pro-slavery  people 
never  intended  to  nor  ever  will  abide  by. 

"President  Polk  has  virtually  issued  a  proclamation  of 
war  for  the  purpose  of  extending  the  free-labor-crushing 
system  of  slavery,  and  it  means  much  more  than  even  such 
useful  servants  as  you  are  allowed  to  know.  In  the  course 
of  events  and  the  run  of  similar  contests  in  historv,  taken  as 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  366 

wise  men  estimate  them,  it  means  war  for  the  propagation 
of  slaver}^  and  if  the  South  is  successful  in  wresting  free 
territory  from  Mexico  for  slave  extension,  it  means  war  at 
home  for  the  same  purpose,  ultimately,  when  the  slave- 
holders get  ready  to  supjjress  our  free  institutions  and  ex- 
tend it  all  over  the  Nation.  As  long  as  they  can  aggrandize 
sufficient  power  to  take  another  foot  of  territory  for  the 
spread  of  their  system  they  will  do  so.  This  is  really  a 
state  of  war,  or  government  by  force,  taking  a  man's  labor 
and  holding  him  in  durance,  not  by  law  or  justice  founded 
on  it. 

"I  do  n't  have  the  means  of  estimating  the  results  of 
the  contest  so  well  as  you,  but  I  do  seriously  believe  that  the 
contest  into  which  our  people  will  be  plunged  by  this  war, 
begun  only  to  extend  slavery,  will  not  end  until  this  is  a  slave 
Republic,  M^hich  these  Southerners  deliberately  intend  to 
make  it,  or  until  slavery  is  extinguished  in  blood  or  a  revo- 
lution, perhaps  both.  For  my  owm  part,  I  care  personally 
very  little  about  who  is  elected  to  office,  and  living  in  St. 
Louis,  which  is  in  a  slave  State,  I  expect  to  have  little  con- 
cern in  public  affairs;  but  in  the  future,  except  it  be  to  help 
a  friend  to  some  small  position,  I  shall  not  act  or  vote  with 
any  party  that  is  not  seriously  engaged  in  anti-slavery  work, 
and  favors  the  most  rapid  extinction  of  the  evil.  Therefore, 
as  I  stated  in  the  beginning,  I  am  an  Abolitionist." 

Douglas  seemed  amazed  at  the  statement  of  his  personal 
friend.  The  conversation  continued  from  evening  until  late 
at  night,  both  vigorously  contending  to  the  close.  Much  of 
it  has  been  forgotten,  but  several  distinct  parts  of  it  are 
clear  to  the  waiter's  mind  to  this  day.  Douglas  was  a  tac- 
tician of  consummate  skill,  and  sought  long  to  confuse 
Browne  on  several  of  his  statements.  In  one  particularly  he 
said  that  the  Constitution  in  recognizing  slavery,  even  indi- 
rectly, sustained  it,  and  gave  it  legal  existence  in  the  Nation. 
He  said  that  for  himself  he  would  vote  against  slavery  in 


366  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

any  locality  where  he  lived,  hut  that  slavery  was  fixed  upon 
us  in  a  system  of  law  and  practice  or  precedents,  and  that 
we  must  treat  it  and  deal  with  it  as  we  do  all  other  subjects 
in  a  lawful  and  constitutional  manner;  that  Abolitionists 
were  utterly  unreasonable  about  it,  and  were  extremists  and 
dangerous  agitators  on  their  side,  as  the  rabid  slavery  men 
were  on  the  other.  Whatever  a  few  people  might  believe 
about  it,  the  great  body  of  the  American  people  were  in 
favor  of  non-intervention,  or  not  meddling  with  it,  and  were 
waiting  for  a  peaceful  solution  in  the  future. 

As  for  himself,  he  said  if  he  held  leadership  he  would 
necessarily  have  to  conform  his  ideas  and  conduct  to  that 
of  a  majority  of  his  party,  whether  they  coincided  with  his 
own  or  not,  and  that  slavery  is  not  always  bad  as  you  ex- 
tremists declare.  "It  has  been  recognized  in  some  form  by 
all  nations  up  to  the  present  time,  that  have  exercised  power 
or  control  for  any  considerable  period,  or  over  territory  half 
as  large  as  ours.  Slavery  to  the  African  is  not  so  bad  as  his 
wild  and  savage  condition  in  his  own  country,  yet  I  am  no 
apologist  for  slavery,  nor  have  I  the  fears  of  it  which  you 
express,  I  am  more  inclined  to  Mr.  Webster's  belief  that 
it  is  certain  to  perish  in  its  competition  with  free  labor. 

"In  the  high  regard  I  have  for  you,  I  sincerely  hope  that 
you  will  be  discreet,  and  not  be  as  outspoken  in  your  anti- 
slavery  opinions  in  your  home  in  St.  Louis,  in  a  slave  State. 
Men  are  daily  fanning  the  flame  that  may  end  in  bloodshed, 
and  I  Avould  sincerely  regret  to  hear  of  your  injury  or  that 
you  were  in  any  way  molested." 

Browne  replied:  "I  will  try  to  take  up  your  reasonings; 
but  as  they  occur  to  my  mind,  I  do  not  wish  you  to  have 
any  doubt  of  my  beliefs,  nor  fear  for  me;  I  am  not  inclined 
to  political  or  public  discussion,  and  expect  no  personal 
trouble.  I  have  said  that  I  am  taking  so  little  interest  in 
party  politics  that  I  seldom  vote,  but  to  disabuse  your  mind 
and  relieve  whatever  fear  you  may  have,  there  are  thousands 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  367 

of  Germans,  Scotchmen,  Englishmen,  and  Irishmen  in  St. 
Louis,  almost  all  of  whom  are  anti-slavery  men,  and  not  a 
bit  backward  about  expressing  their  views.  The  city  is  anti- 
slavery  out  and  out.  There  is  vastly  greater  freedom  of 
speech  permitted  on  the  subject  there  than  there  is  here,  so 
that  I  would  feel  free  to  talk  against  slavery  publicly,  as 
several  whom  I  know  there  do,  if  I  was  inclined.  So  far  I 
have  been  satisfied  with  stating  where  any  were  inclined  to 
know,  that  I  was  an  anti-slavery  man,  who  could  be  de- 
pended on  whenever  there  was  occasion  for  my  help. 

"We  and  our  ancestors,  yours  and  mine,  were  brought  up 
under  the  same  prevailing  ideas,  education,  training,  lines 
of  industry,  and  beliefs,  and  should  not  differ  widely  without 
some  active  disturbing  cause,  which  I  hope  slavery  may  not 
prove  to  be.  But  certainly  we  do  differ  very  widely  on  that, 
unless  I  greatly  misunderstand  you.  You  say  that  the  Afri- 
can is  not  worsted  but  bettered  by  being  a  slave.  I  grant 
that  he  may  be  better  fed  and  clothed,  and  may  better 
observe  what  civil  order  his  masters  may  desire;  but  who, 
tell  me,  gave  any  man  the  right  to  enslave  another  man  of 
whatever  color?  Surely  not  God,  who  made  men  in  his  own 
image,  with  whom  image  is  more  than  symmetrical  resem- 
blance, having  much  of  spirit  in  it.  Hence  God  never  en- 
slaved any  one  or  oppressed  any  man,  but  slavery  and  op- 
pression came  about  by  the  act  of  grasping,  wretched  men 
with  the  spirit  of  Cain  or  the  devil  in  them. 

"If  no  one  else  objects  to  slavery,  and  if  the  African  him- 
self should  not,  by  reason  of  being  better  fed  and  cared  for, 
I  do,  for  myself  and  for  the  hundreds  of  thousands  of  men 
who  labor  for  themselves  and  their  families.  Thousands  of 
them  I  have  opportunities  of  seeing  and  being  with  from 
day  to  day  in  my  occupation,  and  hearing  the  stories  of  their 
struggles  for  life  and  the  hard  living  they  and  their  families 
grind  and  groan  under  in  their  sorrow.  To  my  mind  this 
should  bring  sympathy  and  help  from  any  fair-minded  man. 


368  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

to  relieve  suffering  that  would  wrench  tears  almost  from  a 
heart  of  stone.  Their  wages  are  cut  in  two  by  millions,  their 
families  and  dear  ones  suffer  and  strive  on  from  day  to  day 
with  half  of  what  they  earn  through  their  contending  against 
slave  labor  and  other  lordly  oppressions,  that  fatten  the 
oppressors  on  the  blood  and  wages  of  the  poor. 

"1  denounce  slavery  as  a  greater  curse  to  the  white  or 
European  races  than  to  the  black  man,  if  there  is  difference. 
I  do  not  assume  to  have  better  knowledge  of  law,  or  as  good, 
nor  of  precedent,  or  to  be  particularly  informed  on  the  laws, 
customs,  and  practices  of  the  nations  which  have  or  have  not 
tolerated  human  slavery,  but  it  seems  that  all  of  them  have 
been  so  bad,  that  a  thousand  have  passed  out  of  existence, 
and  no  more  than  four  or  five  of  the  principal  nations  now 
exist.  Nor  do  I  presume  to  have  special  information  on  the 
subject  beyond  what  was  brought  out  in  schools,  and  in  what 
was  called  the  Wilberforce-Canning  movement,  for  the  abo- 
lition of  slavery  in  all  the  British  Colonies.  That  I  did  con- 
sider and  understand  until  1833,  when  Britain  did  abolish 
human  slavery  in  all  her  dominions,  very  much  to  her  credit 
as  a  nation,  in  my  opinion,  and  much  more  to  the  credit  of 
the  brave,  indefatigable  men  who  carried  on  the  contest 
against  unexpected  opposition  of  Church  and  conservatism 
from  top  to  bottom.  But  still  undismayed  and  undaunted 
by  the  thousands  of  difficulties  that  seemed  insurmountable, 
they  persevered  in  their  valiant  struggle,  and  finally  won, 

'"Slavery  does  not,  as  such,  exist  in  any  State  in  Europe ; 
yet  I  regret  and  I  am  free  to  admit  that  servitude  almost 
akin  to  it  in  some  localities  does;  but  this,  rather  than  being 
advanced  as  a  reason  for  the  existence  of  slavery  or  servitude 
of  any  kind  in  a  free  Republic,  should  be  valid  reason  for 
its  extirpation,  because  the  rights  of  men  can  no  better  sur- 
vive such  S3^stems  in  a  Eepublic  than  in  a  monarchy. 

"You  surely  comprehend  that  slavery  and  the  enforced 
labor  of  the  slave  is  as  great  a  wrong  and  injustice  against 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  369 

those  whose  labor  is  partly  or  entirely  degraded  in  the  de- 
stroying competition.  Three  million  slaves  in  this  country 
is  a  terrible  gorge,  or  overswelling  of  the  labor  supply.  It 
puts  eighty  per  cent  of  these  men,  women,  and  children, 
fed  and  housed  like  animals,  in  direct  competition  with  free 
labor;  whereas  under  ordinary  civilization  no  more  than 
thirty  per  cent  should  be  put  at  men's  labor. 

'"'I  am  quite  willing  to  concede  that  Europe  is  full  of 
oppressive  systems  of  labor  and  servitude.  Plans,  customs, 
and  permitted  agreements  surfeit  and  over-supply  the  de- 
mand for  labor.  Over  hours,  Sunday  work,  schemes  that 
take  women  and  children  into  the  labor  of  life  and  industries, 
compete  with,  depress,  and  in  many  cases  obliterate  living 
wages.  These  are  the  schemes  of  Cain,  or  his  successors, 
who  want,  and  in  our  human  progress  often  get,  their 
brother's  labor. 

"You  are  seriously  at  fault,  or  I  must  be,  in  your  holding 
that  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States  tolerates  or  sus- 
tains human  slavery.  I  have  been  informed  that  not  until 
very  recently  has  any  man  in  this  country  made  claim  that 
slavery  existed  by  other  than  State  authority.  In  no  word 
or  line  of  the  Constitution  is  a  man  held  or  bound  to  slavery 
or  service  of  any  kind,  hence  being  without  a  national 
statute  that  makes  a  man  a  slave,  we  are  as  civilized  people, 
and  all  other  English-speaking  peoples,  under  the  operation 
of  what  is  known  as  the  common  law  of  England. 

"On  this  Chief-Justice  Lord  Mansfield  said  in  1773:  'The 
power  of  the  master  over  his  slave  has  been  extremely  dif- 
ferent in  different  countries.  The  state  of  slavery  is  of  such 
a  nature  that  it  is  incapable  of  being  introduced  on  any 
reasons  moral  or  political,  but  only  by  positive  law,  which 
preserves  its  force  long  after  the  reasons,  occasions,  and  time 
itself  from  where  it  was  created  are  erased  from  memory. 
It  is  so  odious  that  nothing  can  be  suffered  to  support  it  but 
positive  law.  Whatever  inconveniences,  therefore,  may  fol- 
24 


k 


370  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

low  this  decision,  I  can  not  say  this  case  is  allowed  or  ap- 
proved by  the  law  of  England,  and  therefore  the  black  man 
must  be  discharged.' " 

Browne  continued:  '^I  feel  sure  that  you  will  not  in  your 
present  equivocal  relation  to  slavery,  like  to  answer  whether 
there  is  better  authority  for  enslaving  a  man  under  our 
American  Constitution  than  there  is  under  British  law.  I 
am  sure  that  you  can  not  believe  there  is;  hence  under 
Mansfield's  decision,  which  is  just  and  righteous  and  still 
unquestioned  and  unreversed,  slavery  can  and  should  be  re- 
stricted to  the  States  alone  where  it  exists  under  a  posi- 
tive law. 

"In  that  way  we  might  hope  for  its  ultimate  extinction; 
but  as  sure  as  it  is  extended,  by  the  admission  of  Texas 
where  it  now  exists,  so  sure  has  the  war  between  slavery 
and  freedom  begun;  because  any  man  with  the  experience, 
judgment,  reason,  and  a  general  fitness  of  things,  knows 
that  the  declaration  of  war  now  being  promulgated  is  as 
much,  if  not  more,  against  free  men,  free  States,  and  free 
Territories,  as  it  is  against  Mexico. 

"Eegarding  my  personal  welfare  and  safety,  I  am  grate- 
ful for  your  friendly  sympathy  and  have  no  doubt  of  your 
sincerity;  but  I  am  in  no  danger  at  present,  nor  do  I  believe 
that  you  are,  or  will  be,  so  long  as  jou  adhere  to  yoiir  present 
beliefs.  But  this  vrill  all  change  as  the  conflict  deepens,  and 
you  will  understand  that  I  do  not  pretend  to  see  danger  to 
life  or  limb;  but  if  j'-ou  faithfully  represent  the  people  of 
your  free  State,  as  I  fully  believe  you  will  when  the  crashing 
emergency  comes,  regardless  of  all  that  you  have  done  and 
will  do  for  this  hideous  slave  monster,  now  seated  in  power, 
it  will  turn  on  and  rend  3''ou,  beggar  and  disgrace  you  as  far 
as  it  can,  even  as  much  as  talented,  but  misguided  Wolsey 
was  disgraced  by  his  hellish  master." 

In  this  way  the  conversation  closed.  Browne  lived  only 
to  see  the  Mexican  territory  taken  and  Taylor  elected  in  the 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  371 

fall  of  1848.  Then  his  brave  spirit  went  over  the  border. 
Often  we  thought  that  if  he  had  lived  Douglas  would  not 
have  served  the  slave  power  so  much,  nor  so  long,  for  they 
were  faithful  friends,  and  Judge  Douglas  showed  deep  con- 
viction in  the  closing  of  this  last  friendly  but  very  emphatic 
discussion.  We  honor  the  father  as  such  as  an  outspoken 
friend  of  freedom  when  there  were  so  few  holding  his  belief 
that  were  brave  enough  to  avow  it  in  the  slave  State  of  Mis- 
souri, or  the  worse  slavery-ridden,  as  far  as  opinion  could 
go,  town  of  Springfield.  It  took  almost  a  generation  to 
arouse  them,  so  that  very  few  of  that  day  are  entitled  to  the 
credit  of  doing  all  that  was  possible  in  the  cause  of  human 
liberty. 

It  is  true  that  Douglas  served  the  slave  power  for  a  time 
as  his  party  dictated,  for  which  he  was  lashed  over  and  over 
by  political  opponents  and  envious  detractors,  many  of  whom 
served  it  as  well  as  they  could.  But,  as  he  said  in  his  con- 
versation with  Browne,  his  path  of  duty  and  work  ahead  was 
clear,  as  he  could  only  go  with  his  party,  or  be  a  cast-off 
leader.  If  he  had  done  otherwise  no  one  could  have  done 
better,  and,  as  it  proved,  nothing  like  so  well.  If  he  had 
boldly  declared  himself  against  the  slave-leaders'  plans  even 
as  early  as  1853-54,  Atchison,  of  Missouri,  would  have  suc- 
ceeded him  two  or  three  years  before  he  did,  with  increased 
powers  for  mischief  and  the  demoralization  of  the  parties 
and  people  of  the  free  States. 

If  this  had  been  done  before  the  Democratic  party  dis- 
ruption, which  was  Jefferson  Davis's  strong  desire,  then  the 
loyal  part  of  the  party  would  not  have  been  left  in  the  con- 
dition for  action,  that  Douglas,  Logan,  McClernand,  Frank 
Blair,  and  other  thousands  like  them,  kept  it  in,  with  its 
voting  strength  of  about  one  and  a  half  million  votes,  who 
joined  as  heartily  in  saving  the  Union  under  Lincoln,  as  the 
other  one  million  eight  hundred  thousand  voters  did  in  direct 
support  and   voting  for   Lincoln.      Thus   under   Douglas's 


372  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

leadership,  much  as  many  zealous  Union-loving  men  dreaded 
the  course  he  had  taken,  the  two  strongest  forces  in  the 
Nation  were  blended  into  a  body  of  invincible  men,  number- 
ing about  three  millions,  who  could  and  did  save  their  coun- 
try. Nearly  all  of  them  who  could  bear  arms  had  to  do  it, 
and  over  twenty  out  of  every  thirty  of  them  were  required 
to  serve  and  rescue  the  Nation  in  the  war  for  the  Union. 

It  has  been  a  custom  of  late  years  to  write  of  Douglas 
disparagingly,  as  some  writers  are  able  to  do,  regardless  of 
facts  and  sometimes  of  the  truth,  when  necessarily  the  sub- 
jects of  his  beliefs,  acts,  and  course  of  conduct  are  of  the 
highest  importance,  in  order  that  we  may  gain  a  correct  and 
intelligent  understanding  of  the  peril  and  danger  that  sur- 
rounded him  through  his  hard-held  and  difficult  leadership. 
"WTien  the  truth  is  better  understood  by  our  intelligent, 
country-loving  people,  it  will  be  known  that  he  and  Lincoln, 
although  political  adversaries  for  their  life-time,  understood 
each  other  perfectly,  and  never  for  a  moment  doubted  the 
honesty  and  patriotism  of  each  other.  It  was  determined  in 
higher  courts  than  ever  graced  this  earth,  that  one  would 
lead  one  party,  and  that  the  other  would  also  lead  a  party, 
and  that  in  God's  good  time  and  way  a  purified,  united  peo- 
ple would  save  the  land  under  these  leaders. 

They  were  antagonists,  yet  they  were  friends.  One  was 
the  necessity  of  the  other;  one  could  not  have  been  as  he 
was  without  the  other,  and  the  two  united  made  the  greatest 
forward  movement  for  freedom  for  a  full  hundred  years, 
Douglas  in  holding  power  and  position  in  his  party,  and 
protecting  himself  against  assaults,  could  have  done  no  less 
to  remain  a  great  leader.  The  Brownes,  father  and  son, 
always  positively  disagreed  with  him  on  the  slavery  ques- 
tion, and  as  positively  declared  their  belief  to  him,  but 
recognized  the  dangerous  party  position  he  had  to  hold,  or 
be  crushed  like  Benton  and  many  others. 

In  our  situation  and  relations  with  them,  we  surely  had 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  373 

opportunities  of  learning  the  strength,  character,  and  abil- 
ities of  these  great  American  leaders.  The  well-defined  pur- 
pose is  and  has  been  to  use  the  facts  and  the  knowledge 
fairly  and  impartially,  further  to  illustrate  the  lives  of  these 
eminent  men.  They  were  both  marvelous,  great-souled, 
strong  men.  They  lived  above  the  petty  disputes  and  de- 
tractions of  one  or  the  other,  often  made  by  hasty  and  in- 
discreet friends,  and  these  seem  to  be  about  all  the  knowl- 
edge and  information  some  writers  ever  gained  of  them 
and  the  heroic  work  of  their  lives. 

These  conversations  have  been  given  at  some  length  and 
the  personal  relations  made,  that  we  might  better  illustrate 
the  strength  and  growth  of  the  slave  power  that  dominated, 
misguided,  and  deceived  the  unsuspecting  people  and  Nation 
for  so  long  a  jieriod.  Some  time  in  the  forties,  before  the 
election  of  Polk  in  1844,  the  entire  South  was  consolidated 
and  brought  to  a  condition  where  its  mighty  force  could  be 
held  as  a  composite,  manageable  body,  wholly  under  its 
chosen  leaders.  It  was  a  well-organized  alliance,  made  up 
of  men  in  all  parties,  but  always  united  in  the  interests  of 
slavery  and  its  extension.  They  determined  to  sustain  and 
uphold  it  in  every  way,  extend  it  in  peaceful  or,  if  neces- 
sary, in  aggressive  methods.  Slavery  had  become  an  im- 
mensely profitable  system,  reaching  to  hundreds  of  millions 
of  profits  annually,  as  previously  mentioned.  It  had  become 
an  altogether  different  system  from  what  it  was  to  the 
founders  of  the  Republic,  who  tolerated  it  because  it  had 
been  fastened  upon  them  without  their  consent,  by  the 
"commercial  men  of  that  day,"  part  of  whom  at  least  fol- 
lowed the  business  of  "slave-traders." 

The  African  slave-trade  was  becoming  extinct  when 
Columbus  discovered  America,  Soon  after  some  native  In- 
dians were  shipped  to  Spain  as  slaves  in  1495.  Columbus 
had  no  scruples  on  the  subject.  He  had  been  at  one  time 
engaged  in  shipping  slaves  for  Portugal,  taking  large  num- 


374  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

bers  of  free  Negroes,  who  were  first  "indentured  for  their 
shipping^'  from  the  Barbary  coast  to  Europe,  where  they 
were  reduced  to  slavery,  but  without  success,  as  its  different 
countries  were  overstocked  with  cheap  labor.  As  a  result, 
no  nation  of  Europe  took  to  the  system,  for  its  cheap  home 
labor  prevented  its  adoption,  and  the  little  attempted  in  the 
beginning  soon  died  out.  Slavery  existed  in  Mexico  and 
some  other  Central  American  countries  on  their  discovery. 
The  desire  of  the  Spaniards  for  labor  enterprises,  the  in- 
ability of  the  natives  for  the  work  of  the  Europeans,  and 
the  demand  for  greatly-increased  industrial  operations  under 
the  Spanish  occupation,  soon  led  to  the  bringing  of  large 
numbers  of  Negroes  to  the  New  World. 

The  Negroes  were  equal  to  the  work,  and  prospered  under 
it.  Ferdinand  and  Isabella  both  feared  they  were  sending 
too  many,  but  soon  afterwards  Charles  V  granted  the  same 
privileges  to  some  Fleming  and  Holland  cruisers,  who  were 
as  thrifty  man-stealers  as  ever  scoured  the  Congo  coast. 
From  this  time  forward  the  slave-trade  prospered.  The 
request  of  Spanish  and  Portuguese  settlers  in  the  Indies 
was  supported  by  the  humane  and  venerable  Las  Casas  and 
almost  all  of  the  Eomish  priests,  who  did  so  to  prevent  the 
extinction  of  the  natives.  They  were  dying  by  thousands, 
perishing  in  many  ways  rather  than  suffering  themselves  to 
be  reduced  to  slavery,  to  which  the  blacks  made  little  ob- 
jection. 

The  blacks  were  soon  much  preferred,  because  the  labor 
of  one  man  was  usually  equal  to  that  of  four  or  five  natives. 
The  African  slave-trade  rapidly  grew  to  be  an  important 
commerce.  England  took  part  in  it  as  early  as  1562,  though 
previously  to  that  some  Negroes  had  been  landed  or  sold 
in  their  ships  as  cargoes;  but  from  this  period  English  slave- 
traders,  the  most  daring  traffickers  on  the  ocean,  went  regu- 
larly into  the  business  of  helping  supply  the  American  de- 
mand.   Queen  Elizabeth  was  believed  to  have  shared  in  the 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME,  375 

profits  with  Admiral  Hawkins,  one  of  the  first  slave-traders. 
Her  grasping  avarice  and  love  of  mone}'  were  equal  to  such 
means,  or  even  more  questionable  methods  of  amassing  the 
fortune  she  left. 

The  English  proved  to  be  the  most  active,  energetic,  and 
also  the  most  cruel,  of  all  who  ever  engaged  in  the  nefarious 
trade.  The  Stuart  kings,  Charles  II  and  James  II,  were 
both  members  of  companies  which  regularly  carried  on  the 
trade,  through  which  both  of  them  made  large  profits  for 
the  extravagant  expenditures  of  the  first,  and  the  hoarded 
savings  of  the  more  careful  and  avaricious  James. 

After  the  accession  of  Cromwell  as  Lord  Protector  the 
trade  was  thrown  open  to  all.  Again,  after  the  restoration  of 
Charles  II,  and  for  a  long  period,  the  Koyal  African  Com- 
pany received  aid  and  protection  from  Parliament.  Later 
a  number  of  companies  were  organized,  so  that  in  1713  three 
English  companies  secured  an  agreement  with  the  Spanish 
Government  to  furnish  their  colonies  with  Negro  slaves  for 
a  period  of  thirty  years. 

Others,  however,  were  engaged  in  human  traffic.  Of 
them  all,  it  was  always  conceded  that  the  English  were  the 
most  daring  and  venturesome  in  gathering  the  Negroes,  and 
the  most  brutal  and  cruel  of  all  the  monsters  who  dealt  in 
men.  Nevertheless,  they  were  much  more  active  and  car- 
ried more  Negroes  to  the  American  continent  than  all  the 
other  European  nations.  The  English,  Dutch,  French,  and 
Portuguese  were  all  in  the  business  in  about  the  order  named. 

The  first  slaves  brought  and  sold  in  the  territory  of  the 
L^nited  States  were  twenty  Negroes,  conveyed  in  a  Flem- 
ish cruiser  to  Jamestown,  Va.,  in  1619,  the  year  before  the 
landing  of  the  Pilgrims  on  the  barren  coast  of  Massachu- 
setts. Cotton  was  soon  discovered  to  be  a  prolific  and  profit- 
able plant,  and  slavery  was  instituted  up  and  down  the  en- 
tire coast-line  to  promote  the  culture  of  cotton  as  far  north 
as  Virginia,  and  tobacco  and  hemp  as  far  north  as  Massa- 


376  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

chusetts,  with  slavery  firmly  established  in  all  the  Colonies 
from  about  1619  to  1650. 

Indians  were  enslaved  as  well  as  Negroes ;  but  in  very  few 
instances  could  they  be  made  to  earn  the  cost  of  subsistence. 
The  son  of  King  Philip,  the  Massachusetts  warrior,  was 
among  those  enslaved;  but,  being  no  more  tractable  and 
much  more  indolent  than  the  others,  he  was  released,  and 
the  attempt  was  soon  abandoned  throughout  the  Colonies. 
The  slave-trade  between  Africa  and  the  Indies  and  the  Eng- 
lish colonies  was  actively  carried  on  until  the  planters  were 
fully  supplied  with  all  the  slaves  they  would  purchase. 
Some  of  the  Colonies  were  decidedly  opposed  to  the  intro- 
duction of  the  Xegroes  and  the  entire  system  of  bondage; 
but  as  the  British  Government  sustained  and  supported  it, 
the  opposition  soon  subsided. 

About  1786,  under  the  leadership  of  Granville  Sharpe, 
William  Wilberforce,  Clarkson,  Canning,  and  all  the  Quakers, 
they  entered  into  a  determined  movement  for  the  abolition  of 
all  forms  of  human  slaverv  in  all  the  Colonies.  It  was  car- 
ried  on  under  many  discouragements  and  disappointments, 
until  it  was  finally  agreed  to  as  a  law,  August  28,  1833,  when 
more  than  twelve  millions  of  slaves  were  emancipated  in 
the  colonies  and  dependencies  of  Great  Britain.  France 
virtually  abolished  slavery  by  the  act  of  free  citizenship 
to  all,  regardless  of  race  or  color,  in  1791,  during  the  blood- 
iest days  of  the  Eevolution. 

In  1776  the  American  Continental  Congress  resolved 
that  no  more  slaves  should  be  imported;  but  under  the 
Constitution,  in  1788,  the  time  for  the  abolition  of  the  slave- 
trade  was  extended  to  1808.  This  was  the  first  and  one  of 
the  most  unrighteous  concessions  made  to  the  slave-traders 
and  to  the  planters  and  slave-holders  of  the  cotton  States. 
The  concession  was  agreed  to  under  duress  of  the  well-di- 
rected threats  that,  if  it  was  not  made,  the  slave-traders 
would  prevent  the  adoption  of  the  Constitution  or  any  other 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  377 

form  of  National  Government  more  binding  than  the  Ar- 
ticles of  Confederation,  which  were  so  loosely  drawn  and 
constructed  that  many  of  the  States  were  claiming  preroga- 
tives of  nationality  under  them,  to  avoid  which  and  found 
and  institute  a  Government  with  all  the  functions  and 
powers  of  nationality,  a  compromise  was  made  with  these 
trading  man-stealers,  permitting  them  to  continue  their 
nefarious  business  for  twenty  long  years.  The  wise  and  able 
men  of  that  day,  many  of  whom  were  strong  in  anti-slavery 
beliefs — like  Washington,  Franklin,  Hamilton,  Jefferson, 
Madison,  Randolph,  and  a  thousand  others — agreed  to  sub- 
mit for  the  long  period  of  time  to  the  horrors  of  this 
execrable  slave-trade,  in  order  that  the  greater  achieve- 
ment— the  founding  of  the  Nation  on  sound  and  lasting 
principles — might  be  accomplished. 

The  incident  is  an  all-sufficient  one  to  fix  the  time  of 
the  first  exacting  demand  of  the  slave-power,  which,  in 
agreeing  to  become  part  of  the  Nation,  reserved  the  author- 
ity, so  far  as  the  Government  was  concerned,  to  steal  one 
or  more  millions  of  Africans,  rob  them  of  their  freedom, 
and  consign  them  to  slavery,  which  business  they  were 
licensed  to  conduct  on  the  high  seas  for  twenty  years. 

After  a  long  dispute  in  France,  slavery  was  again  abol- 
ished in  all  the  French  Colonies  during  the  reign  of  Louis 
Philippe,  in  1848,  without  remuneration  to  the  slave-owners. 
Sweden  abolished  slavery  in  1846-47,  Denmark  in  1848,  and 
the  Netherlands  in  1862.  Spain  agreed,  in  1814,  to  abolish 
the  slave-trade  in  1820.  The  Netherlands  abolished  it  in 
1818.  Brazil  agreed  to  do  so  in  1826,  but  did  not.  In  the 
United  States  it  was  prohibited  by  law  from  1808.  In  1820 
an  act  of  Congress  declared  the  slave-trade  to  be  piracy. 
However,  no  conviction  was  made  under  the  law  until  No- 
vember, 1861,  when  Nathaniel  Gordon,  master  of  the  Eric, 
was  convicted  and  executed  in  New  York.  This  was  the 
only  conviction. 


378  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

It  was  the  current  belief  that  the  law  had  been  evaded 
and  violated  many  times  over  up  to  that  period.  These  en- 
actments did  not  arrest  a  traffic  so  profitable  that  ships  with 
all  they  contained  were  quite  often  captured,  and  more 
often  sunk  with  all  the  chained  Negroes  aboard  to  avoid 
capture;  and  still  the  traders  were  making  fortunes  for 
themselves  and  their  better-concealed  abettors.  The  only 
way  found  for  the  abolition  of  this  wretchedly-profitable 
trade  in  men  was,  and  still  remains,  in  the  maintenance  of. 
ocean  fleets  along  the  coasts  of  Africa  by  Great  Britain 
and  the  United  States.  Since  the  abolition  of  slavery  on 
all  the  American  continent  there  has  been  no  trading  in 
slaves  for  them;  but  the  business  of  slave-catching  in  Cen- 
tral Africa  is  still  carried  on  by  a  few  wretches,  who  are 
still  engaged  in  slipping  along  the  African  coast  as  they 
can  when  not  observed.  They  hover  mostly  around  the 
Barbary  States  and  further  east  on  the  Mediterranean  Sea, 
where  their  captured  Negroes  are  clandestinely  sold  to  some 
Asiatic  countries.  The  fleets  are  still  necessary,  and  must 
be  maintained. 

Thus  slavery  and  the  slave-trade  have  perished  under 
the  hammering  progress  and  the  tremendous  blows  of  a 
better  civilization,  but  not  until  it  cost  to  nations  and 
people,  in  some  form,  two  or  three  dollars  for  every  one 
gained  as  profit  out  of  the  unrighteous  business.  Besides 
there  has  been  a  loss  of  life  and  health  for  its  suppression 
so  appalling,  distressing,  and  full  of  woe  that  the  mind  in- 
stinctivelv  shrinks  from  its  count  or  calculation.  Nations 
have  perished,  one  after  another,  for  less  cause  than  per- 
mitting so  great  a  wrong  as  slavery  to  exist;  and  as  these 
are  passing  into  oblivion,  nations  should  arise  that  will 
abolish  all  the  abominations  of  human  oppression  in  what- 
ever form.  If  they  do  not,  they  will  perish,  as  God  designs 
they  shall. 

The  number  of  persons  taken  from  Africa  and  enslaved — 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  379 

from  the  beginning  of  the  man-stealing  trade,  about  1444, 
to  the  time  of  the  abolition  of  slavery  in  the  United  States 
and  Brazil — is  put,  by  the  best-informed  authorities,  at  the 
enormous  aggregate  of  forty  millions  of  people,  about  equal 
in  number  to  the  entire  population  of  France  or  Germany. 
If  the  number  had  been  equally  spread  over  the  four  hun- 
dred years,  it  would  have  been  one  hundred  thousand  per 
annum  for  the  period;  but  there  Avas  no  regularity  in  the 
number  taken. 

For  the  first  eight}'^  years  the  business,  carried  on  mainly 
by  the  Portuguese  and  Dutch,  was  precarious,  hazardous, 
and  full  of  danger;  not  because  of  fleets  chasing  the  slav- 
ers down,  but  because  of  the  rude  condition  of  the  shipping 
and  commerce  of  the  time,  when,  in  the  storm,  through 
the  little  known-of  coasts  and  reefs  and  cross  winds  and 
currents,  man}^  a  bark  or  cruiser  went  down  with  all  on 
board;  so  that  during  the  long  period  of  over  half  a  cen- 
tury not  more  than  thirty  thousand  were  taken  up  to  1493, 
when  America  was  discovered,  and  the  new  and  immense 
territories  were  opened  to  the  introduction  of  slavery.  Af- 
ricans were  preferably  selected  because  they  were  more 
tractable  and  made  better  laborers  than  the  red  and  yellow 
races. 

The  discovery  of  America,  with  its  vast  and  fertile  and 
temperate,  as  well  as  tropical,  regions,  opened  up  the  equiva- 
lent of  three  continents  for  the  spread  of  the  slave-system. 
All  of  commercial  Europe  entered  into  the  enormously 
profitable  business  of  the  slave-trade.  Nations,  companies, 
and  individuals  carried  it  on  prosperously  for  three  cen- 
turies or  more.  In  place  of  spreading  the  gospel  of  the 
Master  and  the  doctrine  of  the  equality  of  men  all  over 
the  earth,  about  every  kingdom,  prince,  potentate,  or  power 
in  Europe — the  civilized  and  enlightened  world,  as  it  then 
existed — were  engaged  in  the  lucrative  occupation  of  man- 
stealing  in  Africa  and  various  schemes  of  plunder  in  the 


380  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

name  of  commerce  against  all  the  weaker  and  helpless  peoples 
of  the  earth. 

The  settlement  and  cultivation  of  the  West  Indies  and 
contiguous  territory  greatly  increased  the  production  of 
the  rich  tropical  fruits,  and  cheapened  and  widened  the  de- 
mand for  them.  In  doing  so  it  opened  new  regions  for 
the  extension  and  employment  of  slave-labor.  African 
slaves  were,  however,  taken  and  dispersed  all  over  Europe, 
as  we  have  related.  France,  Spain,  and  Portugal  held  a 
few,  as  well  as  England.  In  that  country  it  was  estimated 
that  as  many  as  fifteen  thousand  were  held  at  the  time  of 
Lord  Mansfield's  decision  in  1772,  heretofore  quoted  by 
Nimmo  Browne.  This  number  were  not  liberated  by  the 
decision,  as  they  should  have  been,  but  were  hurriedly  era- 
barked  and  shipped  as  so  many  cattle  to  the  American  Col- 
onies. 

The  number  of  slaves  imported  from  African  shores  into 
what  became  the  territory  of  the  United  States,  mainly  by 
British  and  Dutch  slavers,  under  the  most  careful  and  ac- 
curate enumeration  possible,  was  three  hundred  thousand 
in  1776,  at  the  time  of  our  Declaration  of  Independence. 
In  1790,  by  the  first  census,  the  slaves  numbered  687,897 
in  the  United  States.  All  the  States,  except  Massachusetts, 
of  which  Maine  was  then  a  part,  held  some  slaves:  Vermont 
only  a  few,  seventeen;  New  Hampshire  only  a  hundred  and 
fifty-eight.  At  the  next  census,  in  1800,  the  slave  popula- 
tion increased  to  893,041. 

At  this  time  Vermont  had  abolished  slavery,  and  freed 
her  seventeen,  and  New  Hampshire  had  only  eight  slaves 
left.  At  the  next  census  (1810)  there  were  1,191,364.  At 
this  time  there  were  no  slaves  in  Massachusetts,  New  Hamp- 
shire, or  Vermont,  of  the  original  Colonies,  and  Ohio  had 
been  admitted  without  slavery.  This  shows  that  during  the 
twenty  years'  time  demanded  by  the  slave-leaders  for  the 
slave-trade,  from  1788  to  1808,  the  number  of  slaves  had 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  381 

almost  doubled — to  be  exact,  there  had  been  an  increase  of 
503,647,  representing  a  value,  at  the  low  price  of  a  hundred 
dollars  apiece,  of  over  fifty  million  dollars,  and  as  much  in 
the  profits  of  the  slave-owners  every  year. 

These  statistics  are  given  for  the  purpose,  and  should 
be  carefully  considered,  that  we  may  know  and  understand 
the  power,  force,  and  influence  of  a  system  so  widespread  and 
profitable.  There  was  much  more  behind  slavery  to  sustain 
and  support  it  than  sentiment  or  patriotic  attachment  to 
their  section.  There  was  the  insatiable  desire,  as  rife  and 
dominant  now  as  then,  to  make  a  living  and  amass  a  fortune 
out  of  other  men's  labor.  In  the  fourth  census,  of  1830, 
there  were  1,538,022  slaves;  in  the  fifth,  in  1830,  2,009,043; 
in  the  sixth,  in  1840,  2,487,455;  in  the  seventh,  in  1850, 
3,204,313;  and  in  the  eighth,  in  1860,  3,953,760.  The  senti- 
ment in  all  the  Colonies  was  strongly  against  slavery  in  the 
beginning,  and  it  would  never  have  been  introduced  into 
several  of  them  but  for  ihc  non-resident  owners  of  large 
land-grants  and  concessions.  They  introduced  Negro  labor 
as  the  cheapest  that  could  be  employed;  and  from  this 
start  the  planters  took  up  the  system,  mainly  for  the  culti- 
vation of  tobacco  in  Maryland,  Virginia,  and  the  Carolinas, 
further  extending  it  in  the  production  of  cotton  when  the 
cultivation  of  that  plant  became  one  of  the  principal  in- 
dustries of  Southern  Virginia  and  all  the  Colonies  south  of 
it,  during  the  eighteenth  century. 

However,  slavery  received  its  greatest  impulse  and  re- 
markable progress  as  a  labor  system  from  Eli  Whitney's 
invention  of  the  cotton  gin,  which  will  be  taken  up  later. 
The  climate  of  the  Northern  States  was  never  so  well 
adapted  and  agreeable  to  the  Negroes  as  the  milder,  more 
genial  South.  Many  of  them  sickened  and  died  in  the  North- 
ern latitudes  from  pulmonary  complaints,  particularly  those 
lately  stolen  from  Africa.  So,  too,  it  was  more  expensive 
to  clothe  and  subsist  them  in  the  North.    Under  these  diffi- 


382  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

culties  the  traders,  dealers,  and  planters  crowded  them  into 
the  milder  climate  and  healthier  region,  where  shelter,  cloth- 
ing, and  subsistence  were  the  cheapest,  where  the  climate 
most  nearly  fitted  them,  and  where  vast,  uncultivated  re- 
gions were  open  for  the  employment  of  their  unskilled 
labor. 

There  was,  too,  at  the  time,  a  stronger  feeling  against 
slavery,  as  a  system  of  forced  labor,  that  was  wrong  in  it- 
self, in  the  Puritan  settlements  of  New  England,  than  in 
the  more  cavalier  civilization  of  the  South.  The  Quakers 
were  uncompromisingly  against  it  from  its  inception,  and 
denounced  it  as  an  unqualified  wrong  and  injustice.  This 
was  about  the  condition  up  to  the  struggle  for  and  achieve- 
ment of  independence.  Nevertheless,  the  wise  and  eminent 
leaders  who  formed  the  Government  were,  with  all  else,  the 
most  untiring,  zealous,  and  persevering  anti-slavery  men  of 
their  time,  and  adopted  what  was,  in  their  judgment,  the 
best  plan  for  its  ultimate  extinction,  freeing  their  own 
slaves,  insisting  on  this  as  an  example,  and  prohibiting  the 
extension  of  it  into  any  of  the  territory  belonging  to  the 
new  Nation. 

Washington,  Franklin,  Jefferson,  Hamilton,  Jay,  John 
Adams,  Samuel  Randolph,  Madison,  Patrick  Henry,  and  a 
thousand  devoted  leaders  in  almost  every  Colony,  were  men 
of  high  and  pronounced  ability,  possessing  light  and  knowl- 
edge in  all  human  affairs,  honesty,  devotion,  and  love  of 
right  and  justice,  such  as  no  other  body  of  men  ever  exhib- 
ited on  the  earth,  in  their  work  of  the  founding  and  building 
the  new  Nation.  To  their  honor  it  should  ever  be  remem- 
bered that  those  from  the  chivalrous  settlements  of  Mary- 
land and  Virginia  were  more  determined  and  persistent, 
if  there  was  difference,  in  framing  plans  for  the  abolition 
of  the  evil  system,  as  they  unhesitatingly  called  it,  than 
those  from  the  more  Northern  Colonies. 

It  was  an  evil,  a  real  one,  to  those  great  statesmen — 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  383 

Washington,  Jefferson,  Madison,  and  Henry,  and  those  with 
them — who  Avere  in  the  honest  work  of  founding  a  Govern- 
ment for  the  defense  and  protection  of  the  rights  of  men. 
To  Franklin,  Hamilton,  Jay,  Livingston,  the  Adamses,  and 
others,  it  was  no  less  an  evil,  but  a  more  remote  one.  Their 
-Colonies  had  abolished  it,  and  they  fully  expected  that 
the  more  southern  ones  would.  It  seemed  to  them,  then, 
only  a  local  institution,  and  they  felt  certain  that  it  was 
wise  to  leave  it  to  the  wisdom  and  management  of  the  men 
of  the  South,  the  leaders  we  have  named,  in  whom  they 
could  have  no  less  than  full  confidence. 

However,  on  the  slave-trade  they  were  more  firm,  and 
would  agree  to  nothing  less  than  the  fixing  a  time  when 
it  must  cease.  If  they  had  been  more  inquisitive,  and  had 
taken  the  views,  not  of  the  wise  men  who  were  leading 
Southern  sentiment,  but  the  more  numerous  body  of  incon- 
spicuous citizens,  who  were  demanding  the  longest  period 
they  could  obtain  for  the  continuation  of  their  well-known 
piratical  slave-trade,  they  would  have  found  that  the  com- 
bined power  and  influence  of  the  slave-owners  was  the 
strongest  of  all  political  ideas  in  the  South,  and  that  the 
truly  anti-slavery  men  of  the  South  were  powerless  against 
them  whenever  they  pleased  to  assert  themselves,  and  that 
there  were  the  same  good  reasons  for  fixing  a  date  for  the 
extinction  of  slavery  in  the  States  that  there  was  for  the 
termination  of  the  iniquitous  traffic.  But  it  might  not 
have  been  wise  to  attempt  more  than  they  did  at  the  time. 
The  States  might  have  divided,  and  become,  not  a  nation, 
but  victims  of  European  control  for  another  century.  God 
directed  the  founders,  and  they  made  and  left  us  a  nation 
of  free  people. 

Vermont  v,^as  the  first  of  the  Colonies  to  abolish  slavery, 
which  it  did  in  1777,  before  the  close  of  the  Revolutionary 
War.  Pennsylvania  provided,  in  1780,  for  gradual  emanci- 
pation of  her  slaves.     Only  sixty-four  were  living  in  18-10, 


384  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

being  the  remnant  of  3,737.  The  Supreme  Court  of  Massa- 
chusetts declared  that  the  State  Constitution,  adopted  in 
1780,  abolished  slavery,  as  provided  in  the  instrument. 
Rhode  Island  adopted  gradual  emancipation,  and  had  only 
five  slaves  left  in  1840.  Connecticut  did  likewise,  having 
only  seventeen,  reduced  from  2,759  in  1790.  New  York 
passed  a  gradual  emancipation  act  in  1799,  when  there  were 
something  over  30,000  in  the  State,  affirming  it  in  1817  by 
declaring  that  all  slaves  should  be  free  on  July  4,  1837. 
New  Jersey  passed  the  act  for  emancipation  very  much  like 
New  York,  in  1804,  when  her  slaves  numbered  11,433.  By 
gradual  emancipation  the  number  was  reduced,  so  that  only 
236  were  living  in  1850;  and  this  completes  the  record  of 
the  States  that  abolished  slavery  before  1860. 

The  Jews,  Egyptians,  Phoenicians,  Greeks,  Romans,  and 
other  nations  of  antiquity  made  slaves  of  captives  taken  in 
war  or  by  conquest,  regardless  of  race,  color,  or  intelligence, 
holding  them  either  for  ransom  or  servitude.  The  slavery 
and  servitude  which  most  of  them  instituted  was  often  an 
amelioration  of  the  horrid  cruelty  of  maiming,  blinding,  and 
slaughtering  them.  But  American  slavery  was  instituted 
in  nothing  better  or  braver  than  theft,  without  pretense 
or  cause  against  the  black  man,  and  with  no  better  purpose 
than  selling  the  hunted  and  captured  Africans  to  the  high- 
est bidder.  The  only  incentive  was  the  money  that  could 
be  made  out  of  their  labor  under  the  cheapest  form  of  a 
well-fed  animal  existence. 

There  was  neither  national  cause  nor  personal  enmity 
to  induce  the  waging  of  war  against  them;  for  the  blacks 
were  helpless,  untrained  savages,  and  the  whole  business 
of  slave-stealing  and  slave-catching,  from  beginning  to  end, 
had  nothing  in  it  to  inspire  a  rude  man's  ambition.  At  no 
time  in  its  progress  did  it  ever  rise  above  the  coarse  and 
dull  dead  level  of  theft,  plunder,  and  murder,  stealing  on 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  385 

the  high  seas,  and  drowning  men  sometimes  by  the  cargo. 
The  Barbary  States,  in  close  proximity  to  some  wild  tribes, 
carried  on  the  trade;  bnt  Europe  very  effectually  suppressed 
it  in  the  early  years  of  this  century  with  the  cordial  co- 
operation of  a  naval  fleet  sent  thither  by  President  Jef- 
ferson. 
25 


CHAPTER  XYII. 

WHITE  slavery  has  always  been  an  intolerant  subject 
to  the  Anglo-Saxon  peoples  the  world  over,  and  to 
ours  as  much  so,  even  to  the  avowed  supporters  of 
the  black  men's  bondage.  However,  the  miscegenation  and 
corruption  of  races  under  our  Southern  slave-system  was 
indeed  becoming  frightful,  especially  in  our  larger  cities, 
South  or  ISTorth.  One  of  the  plainest  and  most  instructive 
examples  of  the  bad  effects  of  race-mixing  to  body  and 
character  was  found  in  a  small  factory  town  in  Tennessee, 
near  the  Alabama  line,  which  we  visited  and  made  an  exami- 
nation of  in  the  time  of  the  Civil  War. 

There  were  about  five  hundred  workers  in  the  cotton  fac- 
tory, all  slaves,  except  the  two  or  three  managers  and  over- 
seers and  four  or  five  guards.  Of  the  five  hundred,  about 
twenty  were  pure  African.  Of  the  remainder,  of  mixed 
blood,  many  were  young  girls,  bearing  children  at  twelve 
to  fourteen  years  of  age.  The  average  race  mixture,  as 
well  as  we  could  ascertain  with  the  help  of  the  physician  and 
the  hospital  attendants,  was  seven-tenths  white,  three- 
tenths  African.  They  were  a  yellowish,  creamy-skinned, 
dark,  but  almost  straight-haired,  dark-eyed,  dwarfed,  skele- 
ton-looking, constitutionally  diseased,  mongrel  mixture  of 
children,  and  less  than  half-developed  men  and  women. 
There  were  forty  consumptives  in  the  hospital,  and  only 
three  or  four  of  the  mixed  race  were  over  forty  years  of 
age.  They  were  intellectually  as  stupid  and  degenerate 
as  they  were  physically  inferior,  and  decaying  with  perma- 
nently-fixed constitutional   diseases.      We  heard  of  similar 

386 


THE  MEX  OF  NTS  TIME.  387 

instances  of  race  and  social  degeneration  on  some  large  plan- 
tations and  in  the  larger  cities,  and  saw  individual  cases; 
but  nothing  ever  equaled  the  little  factory  village  where 
prevailing  diseases  and  miscegenation  were  exterminating 
the  victims  of  lust  and  slavery.  It  was  in  itself  one  of  the 
most  positive  and  certain  condemnations  against  the  sys- 
tem that  any  of  us  had  ever  seen. 

Notwithstanding  the  deep  feeling  against  white  slavery 
before  the  war,  there  seemed  little  S3^mpathy  for  the  mixed 
mulattoes,  quadroons,  and  bleached-out  octoroons,  who  were 
as  firmly  held  in  bondage,  even  when  they  were  the  children 
of  slaveholders,  as  the  newest  arrivals  from  Senegambia  or 
the  Congo.  In  the  free  States  the  same  spirit  generally  pre- 
vailed. The  caste  discrimination  against  the  blacks  and  the 
lightest-tinged  African  was  so  predominant  that  in  Ver- 
mont only  was  a  black  man,  or  any  offspring  of  the  race, 
held  to  be  the  equal  before  the  law.  They  were  more  com- 
pletely isolated,  socially,  than  the  Indian  or  the  Chinese  in 
almost  every  part  of  the  country.  The  unreasoning  preju- 
dices against  the  race  are  the  unexpunged  consequences  of 
four  hundred  years  of  conquest  and  rapacity.  Our  human 
civilization,  which  has  been,  of  all  things,  the  most  inhuman, 
has  almost  exterminated  the  race  of  Indians  that  were 
brave  enough  to  fight  for  their  lands  and  liberty,  and  en- 
slaved the  Africans,  who  have  been  too  docile  and  too  servile 
to  contend  for  theirs. 

The  founders  of  the  Nation  were  wise  and  foresighted 
in  many  things,  but  they  did  not  realize  all  the  evil  that 
hirked  in  the  slave-system.  They  shrank  back  from  the 
open  contest  with  it.  Public  opinion  all  over  the  world 
was  then  changing  and  growing  rapidly  against  any  form 
of  human  bondage.  European  monarchies  were  being  com- 
pelled by  the  mighty  forces  of  the  people  to  take  some 
recognition  of  the  outraged  rights  of  man,  enough  so  to 
abolish  slavery  and  all  entailed  servitude. 


388  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

The  fathers  conceded  as  little  to  slavery  as  they  could. 
They  made  nothing  of  record  but  the  indirect  enumeration 
that  permitted  a  representation  of  "three-fifths  of  all  oth- 
ers;" but  these  were  to  count  as  potently  in  legal  power 
and  privilege  as  if  they  had  been  called  "slaves,"'  and  the 
other  more  obnoxious  provision,  that  "fugitives  from  labor 
or  service  shall  be  returned."  On  these  slender,  undefined 
foundations  slavery  became  nationalized  by  the  Dred  Scott 
decision  in  1857  of  our  Supreme  Court,  or  as  much  so  as 
the  dictum  of  a  court  makes  law. 

They  feared  the  encounter  with  slavery  direct,  and,  as 
men  are  doing  with  lesser  evils,  and  have  done  from  the 
beginnings  of  civilization,  they  first  permitted  it  to  exist, 
then  to  encroach  and  grow  to  such  power  and  strength 
that  the  liberties  of  peoples  and  the  life  of  the  Nation  came 
near  to  going  down  in  the  ruin.  They  encouraged  societies 
formed  to  help  and  promote  the  gradual  emancipation  of 
the  slaves  in  every  part  of  the  country.  The  Pennsylvania 
Abolition  Society,  which  was  organized  in  1775,  continued 
actively  at  work  until  slavery  went  down  in  the  wreckage 
and  ruin  of  war.  Benjamin  Franklin  was  its  first  president, 
and  Benjamin  Eush  was  its  first  secretary.  It  sent  a  memo- 
rial to  Congress  in  1790,  signed  by  both,  asking  Congress 
to  "devise  means  for  removing  the  inconsistency  of  slavery 
from  the  American  people;  further,  to  step  to  the  very 
verge  of  its  power  for  discouraging  every  species  of  traffic 
in  the  persons  of  our  fellow-men."  In  1785  the  New  York 
Manumission  Society  was  formed.  John  Jay  was  its  first 
president,  and  Alexander  Hamilton  was  his  successor.  So- 
cieties of  similar  kind  and  character  were  formed  in  Con- 
necticut, Ehode  Island,  Delaware,  Maryland,  and  Virginia. 
Some  of  these  exerted  considerable  influence,  particularly 
in  Rhode  Island  and  Connecticut,  in  the  early  extirpation 
of  slavery  in  their  States. 

The  admission  of  Missouri  as  a  slave  State  was  the  first 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  389 

considerable  victory  of  the  slave-power  after  securing  the 
extension  of  the  slave-trade  at  the  adoption  of  the  Consti- 
tution and  the  Louisiana  and  Florida  Purchases.  It  was 
an  aggressive  act  that  aroused  the  anti-slavery  people  all 
over  the  country.  It  was  evidence  of  the  power  of  the 
propaganda  and  what  might  be  expected  of  it.  Much  has 
been  written  of  the  broken  promises  and  betrayal  in  the  re- 
peal of  Missouri  Compromise  afterwards,  and  it  was  surely 
a  breach  of  plighted  faith  on  the  part  of  the  South;  but  it 
was  nothing  like  so  great  a  wrong  as  it  was  at  first  to  plant 
slavery  in  Missouri,  in  the  center  of  the  Continent.  With 
its  natural,  its  constructed,  and  possible  lines  of  travel, 
commerce,  and  communication,  this  compromise  put  slavery 
in  a  situation  where  it  became  more  detrimental  and  in- 
jurious to  free  labor  and  free  institutions  than  in  any  other 
State  in  the  Union. 

Its  admission  was  conclusive  evidence  that  the  projectors 
of  slave-labor  were  not  willing  to  confine  their  system  to 
any  restriction  which  they  could  remove.  It  was  a  direct 
act  of  putting  slavery  in  competition  with  free  labor 
in  the  rapidly-developing  Western  part  of  the  country.  It 
was  putting  slave-labor  far  north  of  the  line  for  the  pro- 
duction of  rice,  sugar,  or  cotton,  in  the  heart  of  the  Mis- 
sissippi Yalley,  to  antagonize  free  labor  as  far  as  possible 
in  the  production  of  cattle,  horses,  mules,  sheep,  and  hogs, 
and  the  grain  on  which  these  animals  were  grown  and  pro- 
pared  for  market.  It  was  putting  slave-labor  north  of  any 
line  of  latitude  that  had  ever  been  profitable,  and  where 
it  would  come  in  direct  competition  and  antagonism  with 
the  great  body  of  farmers  then  rapidly  emigrating  westward. 

It  was  the  strongest  possible  movement  that  could  have 
been  made  for  the  increase  of  political  power,  and  it  was 
the  more  determined,  for  there  were  at  that  time  large  areas 
of  unused  and  uncultivated  territory  in  all  the  States  of  the 
Lower  ^Mississippi  Valley,  where  slave-labor  and  living  were 


390  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN, 

more  congenial  and  much  more  profitable.  The  movement 
to  advance  slavery  into  Missouri  was  the  strongest  plan  to 
develop  the  slave-masters'  power,  which  they  accomplished 
under  their  old  threat  to  destroy  the  Union,  as  following 
their  first  threat,  not  to  permit  its  formation  under  the 
Constitution  unless  their  demand  for  equal  power  and  terri- 
tory was  satisfied.  Under  this  procedure,  mild  slaveholders, 
like  Clay,  compromised  with,  or,  more  truthfully,  gave  them 
all  they  desired,  and  fixed  them  more  firmly  in  power  in 
the  Nation  than  they  had  ever  been.  It  was  the  entering 
weapon  that  penetrated  deep  into  the  vitals  of  the  Nation, 
and  gave  them  the  opportunity  for  gaining  the  National 
ascendenc3%  which  they  firmly  held  over  forty  years.  The 
opposition  to  this  strongly-held  and  rigidly-governed  sys- 
tem, and  its  encroachments,  was  all  embraced  in  individual 
or  local  expression,  without  general  organization  or  unity 
of  action,  until  the  insurrection  in  1861.  The  slave-propa- 
ganda was  a  well-organized,  compact  body  of  men,  fully  un- 
derstanding their  subject  and  each  other,  and  with  means 
of  concentration  and  singleness  of  purpose  from  the  time 
of  the  foundation  of  the  Government,  and  even  before, 
through  the  control  which  the  slave-traders  had  exercised 
for  four  centuries. 

After  the  Missouri  settlement  and  admission  the  Nation 
quieted  down  to  a  state  of  listlessness  and  neglect  respect- 
ing slavery.  It  seemed  to  be  taken  for  granted  that  no 
further  opposition  could  be  made;  and  the  country  drifted 
into  submission  to  what  most  of  them  believed  to  be  flagrant 
injustice,  because  they  were  without  the  means  of  success- 
fully opposing  it  at  the  time.  They  were  building  a  new 
Nation.  They  were  overwhelmed  with  the  immensity  of  the 
labor  and  hardships  in  founding  the  great  States  of  the 
Upper  Mississippi  Valley,  whose  strength  and  resources 
were  eventually  to  be  called  into  requisition  to  destroy  the 
system  that  had  been  feared  and  tolerated  for  centuries. 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  391 

For  years  following  there  was  little  of  expressed  opinion 
against  slavery,  so  little  that  the  Southerners  had  reason 
to  believe  they  had  overcome  all  active  opposition.  Dur- 
ing this  time  it  came  to  be  taught  through  the  press,  the 
pulpit,  and  the  forum,  not  that  slavery  was  a  crying  and 
deadly  evil  which  should  be  abolished,  but  that  all  agita- 
tion of  the  subject  was  wrong,  hurtful,  and  dangerous.  And 
the  sentiment  prevailed.  The  Whig  and  Democratic  par- 
ties swallowed  the  monster,  and  regularly  denounced  "Aboli- 
tionists" as  fanatics,  disturbers  of  the  peace,  and  other  vile 
names,  and  as  persons  who  would  deliberately  interfere  with 
the  settled  institutions  of  the  Southern  States,  and  conspire 
for  the  murder  of  their  citizens. 

The  spirit  and  memory  of  the  founders  of  the  Nation 
had  passed  away,  and  the  powers  of  the  devil  and  the  slave- 
traders  were  teaching  morals,  political  ethics,  and  the  road 
to  prosperous  Government  to  the  free  Republic  that,  on 
a  time,  held  that  God  created  all  men  "free  and  equal." 
After  the  admission  of  Missouri,  the  press  mainly  gave  up 
the  contest — that  is,  quieted  down  to  submission  and  agree- 
ment that  one-half  of  the  country  should  be  given  to  slav- 
ery, that  the  contest  between  free  and  slave  systems  of  labor 
should  be  conducted  with  equal  chances  for  either  side; 
that  slavery  must  not  be  talked  about  or  discussed  or  writ- 
ten about,  for  that  would  be  unnecessary  agitation,  and 
that  it  must  be  given  equal  territory  for  expansion.  Ac- 
cordingly half  the  National  domain,  or  more,  and  as  many 
slave  as  free  States,  to  preserve  the  equilibrium  of  power, 
were  given,  and,  with  the  suppression  of  free  speech,  it  be- 
came possible  and  even  popular  to  elect,  from  Northern 
States,  "dough-faces,"  who  served  the  slave-power  to  the  full 
extent  of  their  slender  capacities. 

Benjamin  Lundy,  a  good  old  (Quaker,  started  his  Genius 
of  Universal  Emancipation  at  Baltimore  in  1821,  and  kept 
it  going  as  well  as  he  could  by  publishing  it  in  several  cities. 


392  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

and  firing  it  into  the  face  of  the  slave-power  and  into  the 
minds  of  the  people  with  all  the  ability,  ingenuity,  and 
power  that  the  good  old  man  possessed.  He  had  at  least 
the  gift  of  continuance  and  the  virtue  of  not  letting  all 
opposition  to  the  behests  of  slavery  die  out  in  as  small 
a  fight  as  the  Missouri  contest.  He  traveled  all  over  the 
country,  and  although  his  paper's  circulation  ran  below  a 
thousand  sometimes,  he  kept  his  Genius  above  M^ater,  and 
gloriously  pounded  awa}^  against  slavery  alone  for  ten  long 
years.  In  January,  1831,  he  united  his  efforts  and  his 
circulation  with  William  Lloyd  Garrison,  M^ho  then  started 
the  Liberator  in  Boston. 

From  this  time  forward  the  sounding  hammer-beats 
and  the  roaring  blasts  of  a  free  and  unsubsidized  press  rang 
out  in  regular  succession  against  the  iniquity  and  godless- 
ness  of  slavery.  There  was  a  freshness  and  independence 
about  them  that  carried  conviction  to  the  minds  of  men  so 
fast  that  the  free  States  became  a  sea  of  agitation,  and 
Abolitionists  were  made  in  such  countless  thousands  that 
the  majority  of  the  people  in  many  States  and  localities 
became  dangerous  agitators.  These  men — good  old  Ben 
Lundy,  with  his  thousand  subscribers,  and  the  lightning- 
tongued  Garrison,  that  gained  the  world  for  his  audience — 
rang  out  the  voice  of  a  free  press  against  slavery  until  it 
writhed  in  a  nation's  agony  and  blood,  and  went  out  forever. 

Let  us  put  in  a  milestone  for  the  good  old  Ben  Lundy 
and  the  better-remembered  trumpeter  of  the  Liberator,  who 
maintained  the  assault  and  stood  in  the  ranks  until  all  men 
w'ere  free.  They  accepted  the  definition  of  slavery  taken 
from  the  slave-codes  of  the  several  slave  States,  which  were 
substantiall}'  the  same  in  all,  that  "slaves  are  chattels 
personal  in  the  hands  of  their  owners  and  possessors  to  all 
intents,  constructions,  and  purposes  whatsoever."  Garrison 
boldly  asserted  that  slaveholding  was  a  sin  against  God 
and  a  crime  against  humanity,  and  that  immediate  emanci- 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  393 

patioii  was  the  right  of  every  slave  and  the  duty  of  every 
master. 

In  Boston,  January  1,  1832,  the  first  society  on  this 
basis  was  organized,  twelve  leading  citizens  being  present 
at  the  organization.  Arnold  Buffura,  a  Quaker  friend  of 
Lundy's,  was  its  first  president.  In  December,  1833,  the 
American  Anti-slavery  Society  was  formed  in  Philadelphia. 
Arthur  Tappan  was  its  first  president.  This  Society  had 
several  auxiliaries,  and  held  and  firmly  expressed  the  belief 
that  Congress  had  no  right  to  abolish  slavery  in  the  slave 
States,  and  asked  for  no  action  on  the  part  of  the  National 
Government  that  had  not  been  agreed  to  as  Constitutional 
by  the  leading  men  in  all  parties  in  all  the  States.  They 
declared  all  laws  recognizing  or  admitting  the  right  of 
slavery  to  be,  "loefore  God,  null  and  void."  They  advised 
the  slaves  to  use  no  carnal  weapons  for  deliverance  from 
bondage,  and  agreed  themselves  that  their  opposition  should 
be  such  only  as  offering  moral  purity  for  moral  corruption, 
the  destruction  of  error  by  the  potency  of  truth,  and  the 
abolition  of  slaverj''  by  the  spirit  of  repentance.  By  means 
of  their  teachings,  lectures,  documents,  meetings,  and  pe- 
titions to  Congress,  these  societies  stirred  up  an  interest 
among  the  people,  which  was  taken  up  in  public  meetings 
among  religious  sects  and  Churches,  until  it  raised  an  excite- 
ment on  the  question  such  as  the  country  had  never  known 
or  experienced,  but  which  would  have  been  a  mere  prelude 
had  the  people  really  understood  the  plans  and  purposes 
of  the  slave-power. 

These  societies  were  nearly  all  opposed  to  the  formation 
of  any  anti-slavery  political  party,  and  relied  on  their  work, 
which  was  all  right  in  its  way,  to  effect  a  revolution  in  the 
members  of  all  parties.  In  this  they  greatly  underestimated 
the  strength,  coherence,  and  solidarity  of  the  slave  regime, 
which,  like  all  the  powers  of  evil  before  and  since,  kept 
its  mailed  hand  on  every  society,  Church,  or  person  over 


394  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

Avhich  it  could  exercise  direct  or  indirect  control.  Nothing 
less  than  a  well-organized  political  party,  in  which  questions 
of  wrong  can  be  considered  and  discussed  before  the  whole 
body  of  the  people,  could  or  ever  can  meet  and  contend 
with  as  formidable  an  evil  as  slavery. 

Differences  of  opinion,  which  were  almost  certain  to 
come  from  the  beginning,  weakened  the  anti-slavery  socie- 
ties. In  one  way,  however,  they  accomplished  great  good, 
by  pointing  the  way  to  social  and  political  revolution.  The 
free  discussion  of  the  slavery  question  resulted  in  the  for- 
mation of  new  parties ;  for  it  was  plump  against  the  declara- 
tions and  pronunciamentos  of  the  Whig  and  Democratic 
parties,  which  denounced  anti-slavery  discussion  and  anti- 
slavery  people  as  '"'dangerous  agitators  and  disturbers  of 
the  public  peace;"  but  the  issue  was  raised. 

One  of  the  most  imj^ortant  and  significant  results  of  the 
slavery  discussion  and  agitation  was  the  division  of  the 
Methodist  Episcopal  Church,  the  most  numerous,  persever- 
ing, westward-pushing,  and  pioneer-extending  of  all  the 
Protestant  denominations.  The  Church,  in  General  Con- 
ference, decided  against  slavery  in  1844.  The  members  of 
the  Southern  section,  embracing  all  the  slave  States,  with- 
drew, and  established  a  Church  organization  without  dis- 
crimination against  slaveholders  or  slaveholding.  The  Su- 
preme Court  of  the  United  States,  on  application,  ratified 
the  separation,  and  ordered  a  division  of  the  property.  The 
example  was  pernicious,  and  foreshadowed  to  the  slave- 
power  the  manner  of  withdrawal  and  separation  of  the 
slave  States  from  the  Union,  with  all  the  territory  they  could 
possess  or  control,  in  the  event  of  losing  their  National 
ascendency.  At  that  time  it  was  all-powerful,  when  the 
aggressions  for  slavery  extension  were  under  full  headway 
under  the  Tyler  and  Polk  Administrations. 

A  little  later  a  movement  similar  to  the  above  was  made 
on  the  part  of  the   Southern  Presbyterians,  who  met  at 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  396 

Knoxville,  Tenn.,  April  2,  1858,  and  organized  a  separate 
Southern  body  of  that  Church. 

Hence  the  anti-slavery  societies  defied  the  dicta  of  the 
parties,  took  off  the  gag,  and  unlocked  the  tongues  of  the 
people.  This  is  as  it  should  be  where  the  people  are  right- 
fully entitled  to  discuss  publicly  all  moral,  political,  and  re- 
ligious subjects.  It  is  distressing  that  reforms  so  often 
come  as  did  the  upheaval  and  destruction  of  slavery;  but 
if  it  can  no  other  way,  it  is  a  thousand  times  better  to  die 
contending  for  liberty,  equality,  and  freedom  of  speech 
than  to  live  and  suffer  under  the  bondage  or  oppression  of 
cruel  men. 

In  1840  the  Liberty  party  was  formed,  and,  although 
small  in  number,  the  members  were  zealous  and  earnest, 
and  their  little  party  thrived  and  grew  stronger  in  every 
contest.  It  paid  no  more  attention  to  defeat  than  John 
Quincy  Adams  did  in  his  twenty  years'  struggle,  on  the 
floor  of  the  House  of  Eepresentatives,  for  the  right  of  peti- 
tion, who,  in  achieving  the  right  for  which  he  so  manfully 
contended,  won  about  the  first  clear  victory  against  slavery. 
After  the  right  of  petition  was  won,  the  societies  were  or- 
ganized. The  subject  of  human  slavery  was  discussed  and 
rediscussed,  and  the  discussion  and  agitation  spread.  Con- 
gress was  petitioned  and  repetitioned.  Garrison  sounded 
the  tocsin,  if  not  of  war,  of  no  compromise  with  slavery. 
The  Liberty  party  was  started  in  the  conflict.  It  expected 
nothing,  but  won  the  respect  of  mankind  for  its  courage, 
and  polled  7,609  very  independent  votes  for  James  G.  Birney. 
It  grew  and  prospered  to  1844,  when  Birney,  the  second 
time  its  candidate,  received  about  eight  times  as  many, 
62,300.  In  1848  there  was  a  combination  of  "Barn  Burners," 
New  York's  flrst  defection  from  pro-slavery  Democracy, 
Liberty  men,  and  Independents,  all  uniting  in  the  support 
of  Yan  Buren,  the  cast-off  servant  of  the  slave-power,  which 
that  year  had  nominated   General  Cass. 


396  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

There  was  something  like  revenge  in  what  the  pro-slavery 
Democracy  called  "the  treachery  of  Van  Buren;"  but  the 
noted  fact  that  all  men  learned  in  that  year  was  that,  if 
the  anti-slavery  people  could  not  elect  a  President,  they 
had  become  strong  enough  to  defeat  any  candidate  against 
whom  their  vote  was  consolidated.  They  did  this  in  1848, 
turning  New  York  against  Cass,  who  was  the  Democratic 
nominee,  as  they  had  done  against  Clay,  the  Whig,  in  1844. 
The  anti-slavery  party  polled  about  three  hundred  thousand 
votes,  five  times  as  many  as  in  1844. 

In  1852  there  was  something  of  a  calm.  This  year 
Scott,  the  Whig  candidate,  and  Pierce,  the  Democratic  one, 
were  nominated,  it  was  supposed,  mainly  because  of  their 
military  service.  The  compromises  of  1850,  which  will  be 
taken  up  again,  had  been  tacitly  agreed  to  as  another  final 
settlement  of  the  grievous  slavery  disputes.  There  had  been 
nd  further  aggressions,  and  the  people  were  discussing  them 
as  they  liked  all  over  the  free  States,  but  without  excite- 
ment, and  with  no  advance  movement  of  the  slave  regime. 
That  year  John  P.  Hale,  the  Free  Soil  candidate,  received 
156,000  votes,  whom  no  patched-up  agreements  could  delude 
in  that  dullest  Presidential  election  of  the  whole  pro-slavery 
tide. 

In  1856  the  storm  had  broken.  The  skeleton  of  the 
closet,  the  gaunt  specter  of  Cabinets  and  kitchens  in  the 
White  House,  and  the  other  Houses,  the  House  of  Repre- 
sentatives and  the  Senate,  had  taken  the  field  in  armor,  was 
clothed  and  disclosed,  and  the  spirit  of  slavery  and  its 
zealots,  no  longer  compromisers,  though  still  manipulators 
in  all  the  high  places  of  the  Nation,  revealed  their  true  and 
desperate  nature,  and  took  the  field  in  arms  to  fight  for 
slavery,  its  existence  and  dominion,  on  the  plains  of  Kansas. 

The  Missouri  Compromise  of  1820,  that  the  South  had 
never  seriously  believed  in,  and  only  accepted  in  order  to 
get  Missouri  admitted  as  a  slave  State,  with  its  rich  soil, 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  397 

large  area,  and  manifold  resources,  was  ruthlessly  and  dis- 
Jionestly  repealed.  It  appeared  very  plain  to  liberty-loving 
people  what  had  been  gained,  and  what  had  been  lost  to 
freedom  in  the  admission  of  Missouri  as  a  slave  State. 

The  battle  was  on,  and  the  benefit  to  the  pro-slavery 
leaders,  as  they  believed,  was  sufficient  to  hazard  their  ven- 
ture to  make  Kansas  a  slave  State.  With  the  Democratic 
party  committed  to  slavery,  like  Prometheus  fastened  to  the 
rock,  it  could  settle  the  slavery  question,  as  most  people 
then  believed.  The  Missouri  River  was  the  only  water-line 
of  communication  west  of  the  Mississippi.  There  was  but 
one  railway,  barely  completed  across  the  State  of  Missouri, 
and  that  was  under  control  of  the  State  whenever  its  offi- 
cials chose  to  exercise  their  authority,  and  the  powers  at 
Washington  were  all  pro-slavery. 

The  small  force  of  the  regular  army,  as  much  as  one 
thousand  men  and  an  armed  force,  five  times  as  many  in 
Missouri  and  on  the  border,  were  ready  to  be  used,  and  were 
used,  to  carry  out  the  designs  of  the  propaganda  in  every 
item  and  particular.  All  this  and  more,  would  it  not  over- 
load this  review  to  relate  it,  could  be  given.  Yet  under  all 
these  discouraging  circumstances,  God  and  his  faithful  thou- 
sands were  getting  ready  to  take  up  the  side  of  freedom  on 
the  Kansas  plain. 

The  forming  Eepublican  party,  with  a  declaration  against 
the  extension  of  slavery,  had  elected  a  plurality  of  the  mem- 
bers of  the  House  of  Representatives  in  1854,  and  in  tenac- 
ity and  firmness,  advancing  and  not  receding  or  conceding, 
had  elected  ISTathaniel  P.  Banks,  of  Boston,  for  Speaker. 
This  was  a  pitfall  entirely  unexpected,  which  balked  the 
slave-leaders  in  all  their  designs  for  two  years.  In  addition, 
in  1856,  the  Republicans  rose  to  mighty  strength,  gathering 
all  the  weak  and  faitliful  thousands  who  had  been  contend- 
ing for  five  to  thirty  years  against  slavery  in  various  parties 
and  parts  of  parties,  for  conscience'  sake. 


398  ABBAHAM  LINCOLN. 

To  begin  with,  the  Eepiiblican  organization  grew  ont 
of  all  the  anti-slavery  factions,  all  who  were  opposed  to  the 
repeal  of  the  Missouri  Compromise  and  the  further  exten- 
sion of  slavery,  and  the  remnants  of  the  dissolving  Whig 
party  in  the  free  States,  the  tine  old  party  of  the  brightest 
days  following  the  revolution  that  had  schemed  and  com- 
promised on  slavery's  ungorged  demands  until  it  had  neither 
votes  nor  principles  left.  The  Eepublican  mustering  and 
fusing  of  factions  had  no  organization,  only  as  the  flocking 
thousands  were  drawn  to  it,  as  the  best  hope  of  arresting  the 
encroachments  of  slavery.  It  aggregated  its  hundreds  of 
thousands  so  rapidly  in  1856,  and  was  growing  so  strong  out 
of  the  other  parties'  disintegration,  that  late  in  the  cam- 
paign it  came  to  be  truly  believed  that  if  it  could  have  been 
continued  for  two  months  longer  Fremont,  and  not 
Buchanan,  would  have  been  elected  President  in  that  year. 

The  change  of  Pennsylvania  and  Illinois  would  have 
accomplished  it,  and  these  States  went  strongly  Eepublican 
at  their  next  elections.  As  it  was,  Buchanan  was  elected 
by  174  electoral  votes,  against  Fremont,  who  received  114. 
With  the  election  the  pro-slavery  leaders  realized  that  they 
had  fought  a  political  battle  of  the  most  dangerous  kind, 
which  really  meant  to  them  that  they  would  have  to  fight 
real  battles  for  the  extension  of  slavery  if  they  succeeded, 
or  secede  from  the  Union  and  destroy  it,  if  they  could,  and 
fight  for  existence  as  a  nation,  or  go  down  in  insurrection. 

In  this  review  we  are  not  following  movements  in  detail, 
as  we  desire  to  do  later,  but  rapidly  looking  over  slavery 
in  its  last  years  through  its  bloody,  winding,  destructive 
contortions  to  its  inevitable  doom.  By  the  agency  of  soci- 
eties and  individuals,  as  many  as  thirty  thousand  slaves  found 
freedom  in  Canada.  Although  it  was  a  small  number  com- 
pared with  the  aggregate  of  four  millions  in  bondage,  yet 
it  was  an  uncomfortably  large  number.  This  fact,  in  ad- 
dition to  the  active  anti-slavery  forces  in  operation  and 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  399 

increasing,  so  much  alarmed  the  South  that  it  wrought  them 
up  to  the  highest  demands  for  the  arrest  of  fugitives. 
Among  other  fears  for  the  system  was  the  dread  of  an  armed 
invasion,  which  was  greatl}'  aggravated  by  John  Brown's 
assault  on  Harper's  Ferry  in  1859. 

In  the  year  1857  the  work  of  making  Kansas  a  slave 
State  resulted  in  the  formation  of  what  became  known  as 
the  Lecompton  Constitution,  which  was  one  of  the  coarsest 
pieces  of  political  bungling  and  fraud  ever  attempted  by 
hirelings  or  mercenaries  anywhere.  It  was  such  a  bald,  bold 
outrage,  that  open  defiance  of  law  would  have  been  as 
creditable,  and  would  have  served  them  as  well.  They  might 
have  been  respected  for  skill  in  the  execution  of  the  for- 
geries, but  their  rude  blunders  could  never  entitle  them  to 
respect. 

It  was  a  Slave  State  Constitution,  made  and  completed 
in  Missouri,  with  poll-books,  lists,  ballots  voted,  tally-sheets, 
everything  in  detail,  with  lists  of  voters  who  did  not  exist, 
judges  and  clerks  who  never  served,  all  compiled  and  authen- 
ticated by  two  or  three  persons  whose  work  was  apparent 
through  it  all.  There  was  the  same  handwriting  and  the 
same  colored  ink,  making  it  a  mess  of  such  fraud,  intrigue, 
forgery,  and  imitation,  that  to  this  day  as  a  job-lot  of  elec- 
tion journey  work  and  rascality  it  has  never  been  equaled. 

Douglas  had  served  the  slave-power  long  and  well,  but 
all  through  he  had  the  commanding  ability  in  himself  to 
hold  the  loyal  Democracy  in  line;  and  although  Davis,  Ben- 
jamin, and  Stephens  were  able  men  and  adroit  schemers, 
Douglas  was  their  superior,  and  defeated  every  one  of  their 
designs  to  divide  the  loyal  Democracy.  He  had  served  the 
slave-leaders  faithfully  to  the  verge  of  his  political  destruc- 
tion; no  more,  however,  than  all  the  prominent  leaders  of 
the  party  had  done  as  far  as  they  were  able;  but  he  had 
the  virtue,  which  he  exercised  with  all  his  remarkable  powers 
as   a   leader,   to    stop   short    of   any   Union-destroying    or 


400  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

slave-nationalizing  policy,  and  to  hold  his  loyal  Democrats 
in  line. 

Lincoln  had  grown  great  and  able  and  strong,  so  that 
after  his  debate  with  Douglas  in  1858  he  was  the  coming 
leader,  and  after  his  nomination  in  1860  he  was  among  all 
intelligent  men  the  recognized  leader  of  his  time.  The 
Eepublican  party  had  entered  the  field  against  slavery,  de- 
claring its  opposition  to  its  extension  only,  it  is  true;  but 
as  the  system  could  not  exist  without  extension,  the  declara- 
tion was  equivalent  to  a  contest  against  the  system,  and  the 
party  under  the  leadership  of  Lincoln  was  ready  for  action. 

The  Democratic  part}--,  under  Douglas,  was  shortly  in 
the  rear,  but  gaining  and  ready  for  the  movement.  The 
slavery  leaders  were  beaten  before  the  election,  and  were 
aware  of  it  long  before  the  Northern  people,  waiting  results 
under  the  best  preparation  for  defeat  they  could  make  with- 
out disclosures  of  their  plans  or  purposes.  The  Republicans 
nominated  Lincoln  and  Hamlin  at  Chicago  in  1860.  The 
Democrats,  after  tedious  balloting  for  days,  defeated  the 
nomination  of  Douglas,  and  divided  the  party  as  they  were 
ready  to  divide  the  Nation.  Douglas  and  Johnson,  of 
Georgia,  were  nominated  by  the  loyal  free  State  Democracy 
and  a  few  loyal  Southern  men  at  Baltimore  shortly  after- 
wards. 

Soon  following  this,  the  pro-slavery  Democrats  nominated 
Breckinridge,  of  Kentucky,  and  Lane,  of  Oregon.  The  Con- 
stitutional Union  men  nominated  loyal  John  Bell,  of  Tennes- 
see, and  Everett,  of  Massachusetts.  Thus  with  four  tickets  in 
the  field  and  slavery  the  absorbing  topic,  the  political  cam- 
paign of  1860  became  the  prelude  for  war,  for  the  slave- 
holders were  known  to  be  determined  to  maintain  their 
ascendency,  or  fight.  By  their  own  conduct  they  conceded 
that  their  political  power  was  passing.  The  people  of  the 
free  States  as  fully  expected  it.  Lincoln  and  Hamlin 
were  elected,  receiving  174  electoral  votes. 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  401 

The  slave-leaders,  by  leave  of  a  cowardly  or  faithless 
President  and  a  treacherous  Cabinet,  brought  on  the  war  in 
April,  1861 — a  war  such  as  has  not  burdened  the  earth  with 
its  load  of  mortal  suffering  and  death  in  modern  times.  In 
the  beginning  the  South  could  have  made  terms  for  the 
restriction  of  slavery  to  the  States  in  which  it  existed,  em- 
bracing fully  half  of  the  territory  belonging  to  the  Nation, 
and  much  more  than  half  of  its  arable  area.  Or  the  people, 
under  the  advice  of  President  Lincoln,  would  have  bur- 
dened themselves  with  a  heavy  tax  to  provide  for  a  plan  of 
gradual  emancipation  with  compensation,  but  the  slave-lead- 
ers wanted  neither. 

They  wanted  nothing  less  than  the  domination  of  the 
Nation,  its  submission  to  them  and  their  system,  or  sepa- 
ration, probably  on  the  thirty-ninth  or  fortieth  parallel  of 
latitude,  the  north  line  of  Missouri  and  Utah  and  half  of 
California.  Knowing  they  could  get  neither  of  these,  they 
levied  war  against  their  country.  There  were  starts  and 
slips  backward,  and  blunders  in  the  progress  of  it.  Some 
were  too  eager  for  the  extinction  of  slavery  at  once,  and 
some  were  for  returning  fugitives,  as  they  termed  it;  but,  as 
a  rule,  Freedom's  banner  was  in  the  sky  and  floating  over 
free  men,  and  the  bondman's  road  to  freedom  was  opened 
wider  and  wider  still. 

On  September  22,  1862,  the  President  announced  that 
on  the  1st  of  January,  1863,  he  would  issue  his  proclamation 
abolishing  slavery  in  all  the  States  or  parts  of  States  then 
in  rebellion,  which  he  promptly  did  on  the  date  fixed.  On 
June  27,  1864,  all  laws  for  the  rendition  of  slaves  to  their 
masters  were  repealed  by  Congress.  On  January  31,  1865, 
the  final  vote  was  taken  in  Congress  submitting  to  the 
States  for  their  approval  and'  ratification  the  following 
amendment  to  the  Constitution,  to-wit:  "Article  XIII. 
Neither  slavery  nor  involuntary  servitude,  except  as  a  pun- 
ishment for  crime,  whereof  the  party  shall  have  been  duly 
26 


402  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

convicted,  shall  exist  within  the  United  States,  or  any  place 
subject  to  their  jurisdiction."  On  December  18,  1865,  the 
Secretary  of  State  issued  his  proclamation  declaring  that 
this  amendment  had  been  approved  by  the  Legislatures  of 
the  States  of  Illinois,  Rhode  Island,  Michigan,  Maryland, 
New  York,  West  Virginia,  Maine,  Kansas,  Massachusetts, 
Pennsylvania,  Virginia,  Ohio,  Missouri,  Nevada,  Indiana, 
Louisiana,  Minnesota,  Wisconsin,  Vermont,  Tennessee,  Ar- 
kansas, Connecticut,  New  Hampshire,  South  Carolina,  North 
Carolina,  and  Georgia,  in  all  twenty-seven  of  the  thirty-six 
States,  and  the  amendment  was  consequently  adopted,  and 
the  curse  of  human  slavery  went  out  of  the  land  forever. 

We  have  thus  sketched  the  principal  facts  and  features 
in  the  introduction,  rise,  progress,  and  downfall  of  slavery 
in  our  country.  In  our  time,  when  Mr.  Lincoln  came  to 
leadership  for  the  gigantic  encounter  with  it,  it  had  grown 
to  be  a  monster  of  such  influence,  strength,  and  magnitude 
that  no  man  ever  felt  able  for  the  task  of  contending  with 
it  to  the  end.  Strange  as  it  may  seem,  he  of  all  our  great 
leaders  in  the  seventy  years  of  national  existence  up  to  his 
time  was  the  only  one  whose  wisdom,  determination,  and 
management  were  never  at  fault,  and  who  fought  out  the 
contest  with  it  to  its  complete  and  final  destruction.  All 
our  great  leaders,  from  some  cause  or  other,  faltered  and 
failed  or  compromised  with  the  evil  to  its  benefit,  and  it 
grew  stronger  and  more  powerful  out  of  every  attempt  at 
restriction.  Its  opponents  had  effected  nothing,  and  many 
able  leaders  were  paralyzed  and  stricken  in  every  contest 
until  it  fell  into  the  mighty  grasp  of  Lincoln.  There  were 
many  others  who  fought  and  would  have  fought  as  devotedly 
as  he,  and  did  so  with  great  gallantry,  perseverance,  and  skill. 
He  had  the  help  of  millions  of  our  people,  whose  support 
and  sustenance  none  realized  like  himself.  Yet  with  all 
these  considered,  Lincoln's  mighty  contest  with  the  monster 
evil  of  four  centuries  is  and  will  remain  one  of  the  most 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  403 

amazing,  glorious,  and  lasting  achievements  in  human 
history. 

It  is  not  figure  of  speech  or  exaggeration  of  terms  to 
write  of  the  evils  of  slavery  as  we  have  done  and 
should  do  when  Lincoln  and  the  people  encountered  it  from 
1845  to  1865.  When  the  facts,  records,  movements,  and 
events,  the  number  held,  owned,  and  sold,  their  increase, 
the  prices  they  were  sold  for,  the  children  sold  from  their 
parents,  the  parents  separated,  the  unremitting  progress 
and  the  character  of  the  institution,  the  industries  carried 
on  by  slave-labor,  and  the  effects  of  its  competition  with  free 
labor,  were  considered,  the  bad  and  injurious  consequences 
were  always  beyond  expectation. 

The  subsistence  and  clothing  which  the  slaves  received, 
the  cabins,  tents,  and  shelter  they  had,  the  facts  of  the  codes 
and  statutes  under  whih  they  lived;  how  they  were  treated 
as  chattels,  and  yet  held  responsible  and  punishable;  how 
they  were  subject  to  so  much  law  and  could  have  no  redress 
at  law;  how  manumission  was  prohibited  and  made  illegal 
in  most  of  the  slave  States;  how  free  men  and  women  were 
taken,  kidnaped,  and  sold  into  slavery;  how  learning,  edu- 
cation, writing,  even  one's  own  name,  was  prohibited;  how 
Christian  peoples.  States,  and  Churches,  as  they  assumed 
to  be,  interdicted  and  forbid,  under  severe  penalties  of  law, 
the  reading,  teaching,  or  illustration  of  Christ's  holy  gos- 
pel,— all  these  were  opening  to  the  minds  of  men  its  many- 
sided  wickedness. 

The  mind  would  tire  in  the  relation  of  all  the  wretched- 
ness of  the  men  and  women  held  in  bondage — the  cruelties, 
humiliations,  inflictions,  that  made  and  left  them  worse  than 
beasts;  the  corruptions,  lusts,  and  bestial  degradation  of  the 
villainous  men  who  chained  and  sold  and  lashed  and  out- 
raged them! 

What  a  sowing  of  the  wind  it  was  all  over  the  South 
when  the  Negroes  were  carrying  on  labor  and  industry,  and 


404  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

the  white  races  were  going  into  decay!  In  the  brutalizing 
system  of  slavery  the  common  people  of  the  slave  States 
were  the  poorest  of  the  land.  They  should  have  been  the 
hope  and  foundation  of  any  righteous  Government,  but 
driven  into  idleness  by  false  pride  and  cheap  slave-labor, 
were  listlessly  retrograding,  failing,  sinking  below  the  horrid 
level  of  the  better-housed  and  better-fed  Negro  slaves.  The 
free  men  and  stronger-sustained  industries  of  the  free 
States  were  clipped  of  hundreds  of  millions  of  dollars  annu- 
ally in  the  indirect  competition  of  a  system,  the  entire 
profit  of  which  fatted  and  prospered  a  few  thousand  slave- 
holders. By  precedent  and  example  it  led  the  way  to  other 
labor-robbing  and  other  degrading  systems  that  are  with  us 
yet,  with  their  plundering  schemes  brought  upon  us  by  a 
horde  of  as  cheap  statesmen  as  the  pro-slavery  leaders. 

The  system  had  spread  and  held  direct  or  indirect  control 
of  all  the  departments  of  the  Government.  The  army  and 
navy  were  under  its  control  and  management,  as  its  leaders 
were  with  few  exceptions.  Eecognition  of  service  and  pro- 
motion could  only  come  with  its  consent,  and  the  courts 
lived  and  moved  and  thought  and  decided  and  rendered  their 
beggared  opinions  under  the  same  corrupting  supervision. 

Slavery  began  as  a  small  help  to  labor,  and  was  planted 
in  all  the  Colonies.  It  grew  as  a  money-making  enterprise, 
and  opened  new  fields  for  cheap  labor  through  the  profitable 
production  of  tobacco,  rice,  cotton,  and  sugar  as  the  main 
crops.  It  held  its  share  of  the  Colonies,  taking  all  south 
of  Pennsylvania  and  the  Ohio  Eiver.  It  secured  the  pro- 
longation of  the  world-denounced  slave-trade  for  twenty 
years,  and  was  extended  into  the  finest  central  region  of 
the  South,  out  of  which  were  made  to  begin  with  the  slave 
States  of  Kentucky,  Tennessee,  Alabama,  and  Mississippi, 
as  an  offset  to  the  Northwest  Territory,  which  the  wiser 
Virginians  gave  to  freedom.  It  got  the  first  benefit  and  two 
States  up  to  the  admission  of  Missouri  out  of  the  Louisiana 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  405 

Purchase  from  France  in  1803.  It  got  all  of  the  Florida 
purchase  and  a  slave  State  in  1819.  It  helped  to  relin- 
quish, and  not  to  acquire,  a  part  of  the  fine  Pacific  Coast 
region  of  Vancouver  and  Upper  Columbia  country  in  1819 
to  1846.  At  the  latter  period  it  secured  the  vast  Texan 
and  Mexican  cession  of  an  empire  in  extent,  reaching  from 
the  Gulf  of  Mexico  to  the  Pacific  Ocean,  for  which  territory 
war  was  levied  and  carried  on  in  its  own  interest. 

When  unforeseen  and  natural  obstacles  prevented  the 
extension  of  slavery  into  California  and  the  vast  mountain- 
ous mineral-bearing  region,  the  Southern  leaders  turned 
their  projected  pro-slavery  conquest  inward,  and  in  the  exer- 
cise of  all  their  powerful  resources  proceeded  to  plant 
slavery  in  Kansas,  in  the  center  of  the  new  West,  hoping 
to  make  it  the  basis  for  its  extension  further  west,  to  do 
which  the}'  abrogated  and  tore  away  every  legal  restriction, 
including  their  own  plighted  agreement,  by  which  they 
gained  Missouri.  They  gained  power  and  dominated  every 
Administration  in  the  interest  of  their  system,  when  its  con- 
tinuance, existence,  or  extension  was  in  consideration  or  in 
issue  up  to  1840;  from  which  time  forward  they  had  com- 
plete control  and  management  of  Tyler's,  Polk's,  Fillmore's 
(Webster  excepted),  Pierce's,  and  Buchanan's  Administra- 
tions, up  to  1860.  They  had  control  of  Congress,  with  the 
interruption  of  the  House  of  Representatives  in  1854-55, 
from  1840  to  1860.  Calhoun  in  a  life-time's  service  shaped 
and  fashioned  the  personnel  of  the  Supreme  Court  until  it 
was  so  debauched  that  it  was  led  to  the  making  of  a  decision 
which  inferentially  held  that  freedom  was  exceptional,  and 
that  "a  black  man  had  no  rights  which  a  white  man  was 
bound  to  respect."  At  the  same  time  the  stupid  and  faith- 
less Pierce  in  his  artless  way  reported  to  Congress  "that 
slavery  existed  in  Kansas  as  surely  and  legally  as  it  does  in 
Georgia."  It  really  did  exist  there,  but  in  flagrant  violation 
of  law  and  the  time-honored  agreements  of  seventy  years. 


CHAPTER  XVIII. 

THIS  slave  system  had  debased  all  forms  of  labor  in  the 
slave  States.  The  poor  whites  of  the  South  were  more 
degraded,  worse  fed,  worse  clothed,  and  worse  housed, 
as  a  rule,  than  the  slaves.  The  spirit  of  freedom  had  dis- 
appeared, and  their  once  intelligent  democracy  and  stal- 
wart, independent  men,  like  Patrick  Henry,  Francis  Marion, 
Sumter,  Moultrie,  Sevier,  Boone,  Jackson,  and  thousands  of 
others,  had  passed.  Their  successors  had  shrunk  and 
dwindled  to  dwarfs  and  pigmies  in  State  and  council,  and 
cringed  to  and  served  the  oligarchy  of  man-stealing,  free- 
labor-destroying  slavery,  under  the  relentless  rule  of  Cal- 
houn, Jefferson  Davis,  Judah  P.  Benjamin,  Alexander  H. 
Stephens,  and  John  C.  Breckinridge. 

Ignorance  prevailed,  and  learning,  art,  literature,  and 
the  sciences  were  being  crushed.  Churches  were  withering 
away. and  yielding  submission  to  the  wickedness  of  the  time. 
Christ  and  his  gospel  of  universal  brotherhood  and  as  uni- 
versal manhood  were  supplanted  by  a  fetich  of  money- 
getting  and  sequestration  of  human  rights  a  thousand-fold 
worse  than  had  ever  been  the  exactions  and  usurpations 
of  George  III.  Until  their  overthrow  in  1861,  they  were 
conducting  our  Government  more  on  the  plan  of  the  tyranny 
and  rank  corruption  of  Warren  Hastings's  Indian  misrule 
than  any  other  example  of  modern  times. 

Society  and  living  in  the  slave  States  were  honeycombed 
with  cruelties,  assumptions  of  authority,  and  rapacity  that 
would  have  rotted  out  the  white  race,  except  a  few  thousand 

406 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  407 

slaveholders  in  a  few  generations.  These  were  tlu!  con- 
ditions, and  the  real  ones,  in  the  South  at  the  beginning  of 
the  war.  There  were  parts  of  States  in  which  there  were 
notable  exceptions,  like  Virginia,  West  Virginia,  Tennessee, 
Kentucky,  and  Missouri,  where  the  people  maintained  their 
ascendency  against  slavery  in  many  ways,  mainly  because 
they  lived  in  sections  inhospitable  and  unprofitable  to  it; 
but  those  homely,  loyal,  and  independent  people  were  always 
suspected  and  held  under  an  espionage  as  repulsive  to  them, 
as  "suspects'"  as  police-ridden  France.  In  Missouri  there 
was  more  toleration,  for  the  reason  given  by  a  colored  man 
of  our  acquaintance.  Old  Isaac,  ''Misuree  wus  bounded  on 
tree  sides  by  freedom,  an'  God  wus  not  berry  fur  off,  an'  ef 
de  slabholder  did  git  a  mity  good  State  he  gib  de  brack  man 
a  good  long  start  fur  Canaday." 

The  system  was  a  grievous  one,  threatening  and  working 
evil  in  so  many  ways,  and  known  to  be  such  by  millions  of 
free  people,  when  Mr.  Lincoln  came  to  his  high  leadership  in 
the  fifties,  and  the  Presidency  in  1861.  It  was  known  and 
felt  to  be  a  subject  beyond  human  comprehension  how  such 
a  system  could  be  dealt  with,  and  the  free  institutions  of  the 
people  maintained.  The  times  were  serious  indeed;  the 
mighty  race  that  had  grown  strong  out  of  the  self-govern- 
ing peoples  of  Europe,  as  far  as  they  could  carry  out  their 
beliefs  and  become  welded  together  and  united  into  free 
Americans,  had  fully  considered  and  as  fully  determined  that 
their  liberties  must  be  preserved,  and  that  the  battle  for 
freedom  must  be  waged  to  nothing  less  than  a  finish. 

Anti-slavery  ideas  had  been  to  many  a  sentiment  rather 
than  a  reality,  a  conflict  of  the  dogmas  of  contending  dis- 
putants, theorists,  and  statesmen,  in  which  it  was  hoped 
and  believed  that  the  wrong  would  disappear.  This  and  the 
want  of  national  political  organization  had  been  altogether 
too  much  the  policy  of  anti-slavery  people  and  leaders  from 
the  beginning. 


408  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

The  fathers?;,  who  had  emerged  from  a  war  of  independ- 
ence because  of  the  usurpations  of  Britain,  worn  and  ex- 
hausted, did  not  feel  equal  to  the  task  of  contending  at 
arms  with  the  iniquitous  slave-power  of  their  time,  whose 
strongest  element  was  the  buccaneering  slave-traders;  so 
they  parleyed  and  conceded,  and  left  the  conflict  with  the 
greater  system  of  evil,  which  they  could  have  crushed  and 
mastered,  to  coming  generations.  The  same  policy  of  con- 
cession to  wrong  followed  and  continued,  and  was  taken 
up  by  our  statesmen,  societies,  and  Churches,  and  believed 
in  so  earnestly  by  many  teachers,  that  many  well-meaning 
people  by  the  million  came  to  believe  that  slavery,  firmly 
as  it  was  planted  in  the  heart  of  the  iSTation,  could  be 
coaxed  and  argued  and  disputed  out  of  existence. 

When  Mr.  Lincoln  was  elected,  the  conviction  came  to 
him,  as  never  before,  that  he  was  to  lead  in  a  conflict 
vnth  the  strongest,  best-organized,  and  most  thoroughly- 
disciplined  system  that  evil  power  had  ever  built  upon  the 
earth.  He  felt  that  he  alone  was  utterly  unable  to  con- 
tend with  it.  In  February,  18G1,  a  few  days  before  his 
start  from  Springfield,  a  few  good  friends  of  years'  stand- 
ing had  a  friendly  interview  with  him.  The  talk  ran  on 
the  questions  much  as  we  have  been  treating  them,  and 
all  of  the  dozen  or  more  had  heard  him  and  talked  them 
over  with  him  before;  but  all  felt  an  uncommon  wish  to 
hear  from  him  again,  before  he  left  his  home.  He  said 
that  the  Government,  whatever  it  might  be  in  strength 
and  resources,  was  all  in  the  hands  of  the  slave-power, 
and  as  strong  as,  or  stonger  than,  any  of  us  could  conceive 
or  understand;  for  we  had  not  seen  the  inside  management. 
From  the  outside  the  Southern  politicians  appeared  to  act 
with  such  reckless  disregard  of  the  men  in  the  North  who 
had  served  it  best  and  longest — such  as  Van  Buren,  Marcy, 
Cass,  and  Douglas — that  they  believed  they  had  unlimited 
power  to  do  and  carry  out  their  designs,  and  he  verily  be- 


THE  MEN  OF  11  iS  TIME.  409 

lieved  that  they  were  getting  ready  and  intended  to  con- 
tend for  their  institution  in  war  if  they  could  not  get  all 
they  wanted,  and  of  that  he  only  knew  what  the  rest  of 
us  did. 

But,  rising,  and  walking  back  and  forward  as  he  talked, 
with  determination  written  in  every  feature,  his  eyes  kind- 
ling with  power  and  spirit,  with  his  strong  arm  outstretched, 
now  and  then  clenching  the  hand  that  was  a  wonder  of 
strength,  yet  as  tender  as  it  was  strong,  he  continued:  "The 
gravity  and  seriousness  of  the  situation,  to  me,  is  over- 
whelming, and  I  feel  that  a  burden  such  as  few  men  have 
ever  seen  or  borne  is  resting  upon  me.  It  seems  greater 
to  me  than  the  task  laid  upon  Washington,  and  I  have  no 
desire  to  compare  myself  with  him;  but  the  contest  seems 
as  definitely  drawn,  and  the  issues  involved,  in  their  rela- 
tion to  area,  power,  and  people,  are  fully  ten  times  as 
great.  Alone  I  would  be  utterly  powerless,  but,  sustained 
by  the  good  people  that  love  our  country,  I  will  go  for- 
ward in  the  plainest  and  most  straightforward  path  of 
duty,  with  the  conviction  firmly  fixed  in  my  mind  that 
God  will  save  and  perpetuate  the  Nation  if  we  but  do  our 
duty.  It  is  his  Nation,  and  it  is  his  cause  we  are  contend- 
ing for.  The  destinies  of  nations  are  in  his  hands  as  well 
as  the  lives  of  the  little  birds  that  warble  in  the  trees; 
and  he  does  with  them  whatsoever  he  will.  The  contest 
may  be,  and,  if  the  slave-power  develops  all  its  strength, 
it  will  be,  a  desperate  one.  It  saddens  my  heart  beyond 
expression  to  think  what  it  may  be." 

Some  one  present  arose  and  suggested  that  we  retire, 
and  not  occupy  more  of  his  time,  which,  all  of  us  knew, 
was  so  completely  taken  up.  As  all  were  rising  to  go,  he 
said:  "No,  remain.  I  have  nothing  else  to  do,  or  at  least 
nothing  that  can  not  wait.  I  want  to  say  a  word  more. 
I  feel  honored  by  the  visit  of  so  many  of  my  near  friends 
and  supporters,  really  my  neighbors  and  friends  who  have 


410  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

been  faithful  to  me  for  so  many  years,  when  defeat  was  so 
common  that  it  was  not  unexpected,  and  now,  when  some- 
thing of  success  has  come  to  us,  to  encourage  me  in  my 
work,  to  come  from  your  homes — many  of  you  at  consider- 
able expense  and  inconvenience — and  no  one  of  you  making 
any  request  for  place  or  position  for  yourselves  or  friends, 
and  with  no  wish  that  is  not  for  mine  or  our  country's  wel- 
fare, is  an  unselfish  act  on  your  part  that  is  truly  gratify- 
ing to  me.  I  have  never  doubted  your  friendship,  and  if 
I  ever  had,  surely  now  I  never  can. 

"You  have  spoken  of  my  strength  and  the  greater 
strength  that  must  support  me  in  the  path  of  right  and 
duty.  I  am  much  affected  by  your  tender  expression  of 
s}Tnpathy,  and  I  assure  you  that  all  the  strength  that  God 
has  given  me,  and  all  that  he  gives  in  the  future,  will  be 
freely  used  and  given  to  save  the  Union.  You  are  friends 
who  have  never  faltered,  and  as  we  are  parting  it  gives  me 
an  example  of  my  duty;  and  I  assure  you  again  that,  as 
God  gives  me  wisdom  and  strength,  it  shall  be  faithfully 
used  for  the  salvation  of  our  countr}-  and  its  liberties  un- 
tarnished." 

Mr.  Lincoln's  presence,  conduct,  and  expression  on  the 
occasion  seemed  an  inspiration.  He  was  with  the  friends 
of  his  earlier  years — some  of  them  from  more  distant 
places,  but  mainly  from  the  central  counties.  One  of  his 
long-time  friends  said:  "For  twenty  years  we  have  stood 
by  him  through  thick  and  thin,  and  only  just  now  learned 
that  Abe  Lincoln  is  a  great  man.  We  've  always  known 
he  was  a  good  man;  and  if  he  is  as  great  as  he  is  good, 
this  country  will  have  the  best  President  it  ever  had." 

The  most  salient  feature  of  this  parting  meeting  among 
these  thirty  men — many  of  them  able  leaders  before  and 
after — was  his  commanding  presence  and  his  great  tender- 
ness of  heart,  which  appeared  as  delicate  as  a  child's.     He 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  411 

seemed  to  have  correctly  estimated  and  foreseen  what  was 
to  come  and  what  did  come.  His  thoughtfulness  seemed 
quick  and  alive  for  every  one,  so  careful  as  to  tell  one 
who  seemed  to  have  forgotten  that  it  was  time  for  his 
train. 

Let  us  imagine  him  as  he  stood  before  us  in  that  as- 
semblage, among  the  choicest  friends  he  ever  had.  There 
he  was,  high  above  all  in  stature,  as  he  was  in  leadership, 
and  still  you  would  have  no  thought  of  oversize  or  gross- 
ness.  Like  the  friends  there  congregated,  you  would  be 
convinced  that,  when  firmly  settled  in  the  belief  that  he 
was  right,  he  would  use  every  power  and  resource  for  the 
preservation  of  the  Union,  and  that,  if  the  Nation  went 
down,  he  would  go  down  with  it. 

The  people  of  the  free  States  were  a  remarkably  busy, 
energetic  body,  earnestly  engaged  in  the  ordinary  pursuits 
of  industrj-,  and,  besides,  were  burdened  with  the  task  of 
opening  up  the  widespreading,  almost  boundless  stretches 
of  the  rich,  alluvial  valleys  and  plains,  and  reducing  them 
from  wild  wastes  to  places  fit  for  habitation.  Ordinary 
public  and  political  affairs  were  much  neglected,  except 
when  they  became  subjects  of  vital  and  unavoidable  im- 
portance. The  great  work  they  were  engaged  in — the  mak- 
ing of  new  States,  was  of  such  magnitude  and  all-pervad- 
ing interest  that  there  was  scarce  time  for  other  eniplo}^- 
ment.  This  neglect  and  disregard  were  often  taken  ad- 
vantage of  to  the  detriment  of  the  growing  communities. 
There  was  the  further  disadvantage  that,  in  the  new  settle- 
ments, the  want  of  acquaintance  and  defective  means  of 
communication  left  them  more  helpless  than  in  the  older 
communities.  In  this  formative  stage  of  the  Great  West 
slavery  made  its  encroachment  on  an  industrious,  unsus- 
pecting people. 

When  the  thirteen  Colonies  became  the  United  States 


412 


ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 


of  America  by  the  adoption  of  the  Constitution  in  1788, 
the  States  were  as  nearly  evenly  divided  between  free  and 
slave  as  could  be,  as  follows: 


FREE    STATES. 

Connecticut, 
Massachusetts, 
New  Hampshire, 
New  York, 
New  Jerse}^, 
Pennsylvania, 
Ehode  Island. 


SLAVE    STATES. 

Delaware, 
Georgia, 
Maryland, 
North  Carolina, 
South  Carolina, 
Virginia. 


ADMITTED. 

Vermont 1791 

Ohio    1802 

Indiana 1816 

Illinois    1818 

Maine   1820 

Michigan    1837 


ADMITTED. 

Kentucky  1792 

Tennessee     1796 

Louisiana   1813 

Mississippi   1817 

Alabama 1819 

Missouri   1830 

Florida   1845 

Texas    1845 


The  number  of  each  was  even — twelve  States — up  to 
the  admission  of  Missouri. 

By  the  first  settlement,  when  the  Constitution  was 
adopted,  in  the  enumeration  for  making  representative  and 
electoral  districts,  the  blacks  were  included  under  the  desig- 
nation "all  others,"  thus  permitting  a  representation  of 
three  out  of  five  slaves  in  Congress,  and  the  same  in  making 
up  the  number  of  Presidential  electors.  This  advantage, 
at  the  beginning  of  the  war,  in  1861,  gave  the  slave  States 
over  fifty  representatives  and  as  many  votes  for  Presi- 
dent— an  advantage  that  amounted  to  one-sixth  of  the 
entire  voting  strength  of  the  Nation.    The  apparent  con- 


TEE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  413 

cession  to  freedom  at  the  time  of  the  adoption  of  the  Con- 
stitution was  that  Congress  should  have  the  right  to  pro- 
hibit the  slave-trade  after  the  lapse  of  twenty  years,  in  1808. 

Thus,  in  order  to  get  the  consent  of  the  slave-power 
for  the  adoption  of  the  Constitution,  the  vicious,  piratical 
business  of  man-stealing  was  permitted  to  exist  so  long — 
a  period  in  which  the  man-seizing,  sea-roving  brigands  fully 
expected  to  supply  the  country  with  enough  stolen  Africans 
to  fill  the  slaveholders'  demand  for  slaves  for  fifty  years. 

During  the  twenty  years  in  which  it  was  so  protected, 
the  business  was  greatly  stimulated,  to  the  extent  that 
about  five  hundred  thousand  Africans  were  stolen  and  sold 
in  the  United  States,  almost  doubling  the  number  of  slaves 
held,  and  swelling  the  number  of  black  people  pirated  from 
Africa  and  sold  into  slavery  in  the  slave  States  to  the  enor- 
mous aggregate  of  about  eight  hundred  thousand  souls. 
These  multiplied  and  increased  until  there  were  four  million 
slaves  in  the  South  in  1861. 

The  Constitutional  concession  for  the  surrender  of 
escaped  slaves  was  as  unjust  and  unrighteous  as  the  slave 
catching  and  cruising  from  Africa.  It  was  man-stealing 
in  both — one  across  the  seas,  the  other  from  the  border 
States,  wherever  they  could  be  kidnaped,  and  sold  into 
the  hell  of  slavery  in  the  cotton  States.  This  was  a  pro- 
vision to  secure  and  follow  up  with  legal  processes  all  al- 
leged fugitive  slaves,  who,  by  the  laws  passed  under  it  by 
Congress,  were  classified  as  felons.  We  have  related  the 
drastic  provisions  of  law  under  which  the}'^  were  held  to 
bondage  in  the  slave  States.  It  was  the  intention  to  make 
the  laws  for  their  capture  and  rendition  as  severe  and  out- 
rageous in  the  same  kind  of  oppression  that  the  whole  man- 
stealing  business  existed  under  from  the  beginning.  One 
of  the  worst  features  of  the  Fugitive-slave  Law  was  that 
it  turned  Northern  communities  into  man-catchers  at  the 
demand  of  the  slave-hunters  under  all  the  acts.     The  re- 


414  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

deeming  feature  was,  however,  that  the  law  was  so  ob- 
noxious that  it  defeated  itself;  for  no  statute  could  turn 
free  communities  into  such  degrading  business. 

About  the  time  of  the  adoption  of  the  Constitution  most 
of  the  slaves  were  held  in  five  Southern  States.  A  few 
were  held  in  all  the  Northern  ones;  but  the  system  was 
never  profitable  in  them,  and  there  was  so  much  pro- 
nounced opposition  to  it  by  the  Quakers  and  Puritans  that 
it  never  thrived,  and  was  given  up  long  before  it  came 
to  be  a  question  of  public  or  political  concern.  There  was 
never  a  majority  for  slavery  in  the  early  Congresses,  nor 
in  the  Convention  that  framed  the  Constitution.  The  five 
ISTorthern  States,  with  much  more  than  half  the  popula- 
tion, were  all  anti-slavery.  Five  of  the  South  were  known 
to  be  for  slavery,  but  Virginia  was  constantly  and  always 
anti-slavery.  This  gave  the  anti-slavery  delegates  a  major- 
ity influence  whenever  they  chose  to  exercise  it.  The  lead- 
ing statesmen  of  Virginia  agreed  to  the  existence  of  slavery 
and  the  prolongation  of  the  slave-trade  in  order  to  com- 
pass and  achieve  their  one  great  desire  of  forming  and 
founding  the  Nation.  New  York  was  lukewarm  and  in- 
different; so  the  co-operation  of  the  five  Southern  slave 
States  became  a  necessity  to  effect  the  harmonious  and  law- 
ful consolidation  of  the  Colonies  under  National  and  Con- 
stitutional Government.  The  spirit  and  judgment  against 
slavery  is  best  shown  in  the  deed  of  cession  which  was 
agreed  to  by  Virginia,  and  passed  and  approved  by  Con- 
gress, which  dedicated  the  vast  region  of  the  Northwest 
to  freedom.  The  deed  and  all  the  acts  enabling  it  to  be- 
come a  free  territory  were  drawn  by  Jefferson,  himself  a 
slaveholder. 

At  the  time  it  was  generally  believed  that  the  plan  and 
purposes  of  the  Virginia  leaders,  which  Franklin  and  Ham- 
ilton fully  approved  as  the  best  for  the  gradual  emancipa- 
tion and  restriction  of  slavery,  would  prevail.     Perhaps  it 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  415 

miglit  liave  prevailed,  but  Eli  Whitney,  a  progressive,  in- 
quisitive Yankee,  went  South  for  his  health  and  the  better- 
ment of  his  fortunes.  There  he  saw  for  the  first  time  the 
production  of  cotton,  with  a  nutlike  boll,  a  heavy,  oily 
seed,  and  a  pure  white  fiber  two  or  three  inches  in  length. 
From  two  to  five  hundred  pounds  of  this  excellent  fiber, 
useful  for  clothing,  bedding,  and  other  domestic  purposes, 
could  be  cultivated  and  gathered  from  an  acre  of  land 
according  to  its  fertility  and  adaptation.  An  industrious 
Negro  man  could  separate  about  one  pound  a  day  of  this 
valuable  fiber,  take  it  out  of  the  pod,  and  carefully  strip 
it  from  its  tenacious,  oily  seed. 

When  Whitney  got  South  among  friends,  his  reputation 
for  invention  had  gone  with  him.  They  assured  him  that 
nothing  they  could  think  of  would  equal  in  value  a  ma- 
chine that  would  separate  the  cotton  fiber  from  the  seed. 
Whitney  set  earnestly  at  work  with  all  the  perseverance 
and  energy  of  his  nature  on  one  of  the  greatest  inventions  of 
his  age,  and  in  full  view,  as  he  believed,  of  a  certain  fortune. 
His  hand  was  unerring;  he  was  right.  In  a  few  months  he 
invented  and  worked  out  a  machine,  mostly  with  his  own 
hands,  that  would  do  the  work.  One  man,  with  the  ma- 
chine which  he  made,  could,  with  his  unaided  labor,  sepa- 
rate fifty  pounds  of  cotton  fiber  a  day. 

This  was  about  October,  1793.  He  had  achieved  last- 
ing distinction.  He  had  invented  and  made  the  machine 
that  ^vould  revolutionize  labor  and  the  production  of  cot- 
ton in  the  States  adapted  to  its  cultivation,  and  shortly  all 
over  the  world.  He  made  the  invention,  and  reached  the 
distinction  which  he  deserved.  He  was  in  all  equity  and 
justice  entitled  to  something  out  of  the  millions  so  many 
amassed  by  reason  of  his  valuble  invention.  But  others, 
and  the  great  body  of  Southern  planters  in  the  cotton 
States,  reaped  the  money  reward  of  his  genius  and  labor. 
The  Southern  people  were  noted  for  many  commendable 


416  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

qualities;  but  this  cotton-gin  invention  reminds  us  that 
generosity  was  never  one  of  them.  In  their  day  they  suf- 
fered and  permitted  General  Jackson  to  pay  a  fine  of  one 
thousand  dollars  for  violation  of  local  laws,  when  the  old 
hero  saved  Xew  Orleans  and  the  entire  State  and  Terri- 
tory of  Louisiana  from  the  British;  and  they  likewise  suf- 
fered Eli  Whitney  and  his  heirs  to  go  unrewarded  for  the 
invention  of  the  plain-working  machine,  out  of  which  they 
made  individual  fortunes  by  the  thousand.  His  great  in- 
vention, that  created  such  an  overwhelming  demand  for 
labor,  fastened  slavery  more  firmly  on  our  country  for 
three-quarters  of  a  century  than  the  most  drastic  code  or 
persevering  conduct  of  the  infamous  slave-traders  could 
have  done.  This  was  not  done,  in  whole  or  in  part,  by  those 
who  urged  him  on  to  his  undertaking.  They  were  anti- 
slavery  people,  and  remained  his  friends. 

The  compromise  which  gave  the  great  State  of  Mis- 
souri to  slavery,  placing  it  in  the  most  commanding  situa- 
tion in  relation  to  its  extension  and  the  exercise  of  political 
power,  was  one  of  the  most  unfortunate  concessions  ever 
made  to  slavery.  It  was  especially  valuable  by  the  reason 
of  the  situation  of  Missouri  and  its  relation  to  the  growing 
West,  and  being  conducted  as  it  was,  it  forestalled  any  con- 
siderable opposition  for  years.  It  was  the  recognized 
slavery  settlement  during  Mr.  Clay's  public  career,  when 
he  and  his  followers  became  the  successors  of  the  Virginia 
leaders,  who  were  fully  committed  to  and  believed  in  their 
plan  of  a  peaceful  policy  of  gradual  emancipation. 

They  were  apparently  so  earnest  and  sincere  in  their  be- 
lief that  they  took  thousands  of  the  strongest  anti-slavery 
people  and  many  of  their  ablest  leaders  into  the  work,  who 
gave  entire  submission  to  it.  During  the  thirty  years'  prog- 
ress and  achievement  of  the  slave-propaganda,  from  the 
bad  settlement  of  1820  to  the  next  bad  one  of  1850,  these 
peacefully-inclined    men — Clay    and    his    followers — were 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  417 

full}^  co-operating  and  sustaining,  as  far  as  the  results 
could,  the  pernicious  policies  of  Calhoun,  the  avowed  de- 
fender and  extender  of  the  slave  system.  In  this  thirty 
years  of  management  under  Calhoun  and  Clay,  slavery  got 
more  than  half  of  the  territorv  that  was  added  to  the  Na- 
tion,  and  became  so  firmly  fixed  in  power  as  to  assert  and 
exercise  National  supremacy.  This  influence  had  grown 
to  such  proportions  as  to  Le  absolutism  in  the  Democratic 
party  from  the  beginning  of  Tyler's  accession  to  the  close 
of  Buchanan's  surrendering  Administration. 

During  the  same  time  the  Whig  party  of  former  glo- 
ries was  disintegrating,  when  it  should  have  been  approach- 
ing its  strongest  organization.  In  1852,  after  the  death 
of  Clay,  this  anti-slavery  party,  or  party  of  peaceful  emanci- 
pation, claiming  to  be  the  successor  of  Washington,  Hamil- 
ton, the  Adamses,  Clay,  and  Webster,  was  utterly  destroyed 
as  a  political  organization.  These  Whigs  were  great  lead- 
ers, every  one  of  them,  but  they  could  not  reunite  and  re- 
invigorate  the  dying  party,  which  had  conceded  and  bar- 
tered away  its  principles  in  the  interest  of  slave  extensions. 

Of  all  and  for  all  these  Federals  and  Whigs,  John  Bell, 
of  Tennessee,  was  the  only  one  who  was  left  who  could 
contend  for  and  expect  to  control  his  State  in  1860.  Some- 
thing may  be  learned  of  the  deadening  influence  of  the 
slave-prevailing  sentiment  when  it  is  remembered  that 
General  Scott,  who  was  a  great  leader  in  every  achieve- 
ment he  had  won  for  our  country,  was  compelled  to  be  a 
candidate  for  President  on  a  declaration  of  principles  that 
was  utterly  oblivious  of  the  great,  absorbing  question  of 
the  time,  further  than  docile  submission  to  the  last  com- 
promise. The  last  demand  made  by  Calhoun  and  Davis, 
and  conceded  by  Clay  and  Webster  in  1850,  was  one  that 
Lincoln,  leader  and  master  of  coming  times,  and  Seward 
could  then  only  submit  to  and  support  with  the  Whig  Presi- 
dential candidates  in  1848  and  1852. 
27 


418  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

Passing  along  under  the  operation  of  the  Missouri 
Compromise,  the  free  State  of  Michigan  was  admitted, 
January  15,  1836;  the  free  State  of  Iowa  was  admitted, 
March  3,  1845;  the  slave  State  of  Arkansas  was  admitted, 
June  15,  1836;  the  slave  State  of  Florida  was  admitted, 
March  3,  1845.  Either  one  of  these  free  States  had  more 
population  than  both  the  slave  ones  when  admitted,  and 
was  far  more  likely  to  increase,  not  only  in  population,  but 
in  all  the  industries  and  improvements  which  make  and 
build  up  independent  communities.  The  evening-up  ad- 
missions for  political  balancing  went  on  as  regardless  of 
population,  industries,  and  the  care  of  free  institutions 
as  it  was  possible  to  leave  them. 

In  this  period — from  1820  to  1850 — the  Nation  was 
making  remarkable  progress.  The  cotton,  rice,  tobacco, 
and  sugar  production  in  the  South  was  enormous,  bringing 
into  market  every  year  quantities  that  brought  money  and 
manufactured  products  by  hundreds  of  millions  in  return. 
The  North  and  Northwest  were  building  up  States  and 
communities,  with  houses,  farms,  and  homes  and  the  con- 
veniences, and  many  of  the  comforts  of  modern  civilization, 
more  rapidly  and  more  widely  than  had  ever  been  accom- 
plished by  any  other  people. 

The  slavery  question  was  not  settled,  and  was  not  be- 
lieved to  be,  unless  it  was  by  such  mistaken  patriots  as 
Clay  and  his  school  of  statesmen,  who  seemed  to  be  imbued 
and  satisfied  with  the  efficacy  of  compromises  restrictive  of 
free  institutions.  The  South,  under  the  policy  of  the  slave- 
propaganda  and  the  watchful,  adroit,  and  never-hesitating 
leadership  of  Calhoun,  made  compromises  only  when  they 
could  do  no  better.  They  stuck  to  them  so  long  as  they 
were  making  their  most  rapid  progression.  Meanwhile 
they  were  getting  ready  for  a  more  open  demand  for  terri- 
tory, repressive  limitations  against  freedom  of  speech  and 
discussion  in  both  the  old  political  parties,  and  more  effect- 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  419 

ive  slave-catching  laws.  All  these  had  to  he  forthcoming 
from  their  friends  and  servants — the  compromisers  of  free 
institutions  in  Congress — as  soon  as  they  got  ready  and 
called  for  them. 

On  March  1,  1845,  a  few  days  hefore  President  Polk's 
inauguration,  Congress  passed  a  joint  resolution  in  favor 
of  the  annexation  of  Texas  and  its  admission  as  a  State. 
War  was  levied  against  Mexico,  as  related,  not  so  much 
to  gain  the  valuable  territory  of  Texas — for  the  brave 
Americans  under  San  Houston  had  done  that — as  to  wrest 
from  the  helpless  Aztec  people  territory  that  would  make 
a  dozen  principalities  or  States,  every  one  of  them  to  be  a 
new  field  for  their  "divine  institution  of  slavery." 

The  war  was  waged,  and  the  Northern  half  of  Mexico 
was  taken,  as  it  had  been  planned  for  years;  but  it  came 
as  ashes  to  their  lips.  Texas  was,  however,  formally  ad- 
mitted as  a  slave  State,  December  29,  1845,  with  the  un- 
usual privilege  of  making  four  more  slave  States  as  fast 
as  population  and  settlement  would  justify  their  admission, 
and  the  further  National  prerogative  of  the  State  owner- 
ship of  its  public  domain,  the  unoccupied  part  of  which 
was  at  that  time  larger  than  three  States  of  the  size  of 
Missouri. 

The  admission  of  Texas  made,  for  the  time,  one  more 
slave  than  there  were  free  States;  but  this  was  balanced 
again  in  1848,  when  Wisconsin  was  admitted  as  a  free  State. 
God,  in  great  wisdom  and  ample  preparation,  gave  men 
the  opportunity  to  build  up  a  pure  democracy  on  this  Con- 
tinent, and  has  always  provided  means  for  the  protection 
and  advance  of  the  simple  faith  and  doctrine  that  the 
rights  of  men  are  paramount  in  all  human  systems  of  gov- 
ernment when  rightly  and  honestly  administered.  In 
that  way  came  the  marvelous  achievement  of  the  founda- 
tion of  the  Eepublic  against  Britain  in  the  beginning,  which 
has   been    followed    all    along   l)y   natural    and    unexpected 


420  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

agencies  springing  up  at  every  juncture  wherever  free  in- 
stitutions seemed  in  hazard  or  dangerous  situation. 

As  it  has  been  made  apparent  in  the  narration  of  the 
foregoing  facts,  no  better  plan  or  more  complete  projected 
scheme  could  have  been  devised  than  the  one  which  was 
to  make  every  foot  of  territory  wrested  from  Mexico  part 
of  the  coming  slave  empire,  and  give  it  headway  and  path- 
way to  the  Pacific  Ocean.  With  this  scheme  carried  out, 
the  slave-owners  would  have  had  territory  and  States  without 
limit,  when  probably  they  would  have  met  with  few  other 
obstacles  in  the  establishment  of  their  ideal  sovereignty. 
The  nation,  or  empire,  of  Davis  and  his  followers  was  to  be 
made  out  of  the  slave  States  of  the  South,  Mexico,  Central 
America,  and  as  many  of  the  islands  of  the  Antilles  as  they 
desired,  with  or  without  the  jSTorthern  States,  or  part  of 
them,  as  might  be  determined.  This  plan  was  all  in  due 
course  of  execution,  and  no  body  of  men  who  ever  led  a 
good  or  bad  cause  ever  had  better  reasons,  apparently,  to 
expect  the  complete  success  of  their  plans  up  to  a  certain 
time. 

The  slave  propagandists,  with  the  help,  direct  and  indi- 
rect, of  all  who  could  be  coaxed,  led,  or  driven  into  their 
horrid  conspiracy,  were  expecting  success.  On  the  suc- 
cessful close  of  the  Mexican  war,  if  there  had  been  no 
other  than  human  agencies  for  the  slavers  to  contend 
against,  the  American  Eepublic  would  have  perished  in  the 
house  of  its  pretended  friends  and  administrators  at  the 
time,  and  freedom  would  have  been  but  a  memory. 

Not  many  men  were  leaders  in  those  days,  and  but  one 
or  two  of  these  ever  were  in  any  kind  of  situation  to  do 
much  against  the  culmination  of  this  diabolical  scheme. 
General  Taylor  was  elected  President,  and,  although 
a  slaveholder,  he  was  an  honest  man,  and  was  never 
trusted,  and  could  do  little  against  them,  except  to  hold 
them  back.     He  died  in  the  second  year  of  his  term,  and 


I 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  421 

was  succeeded  by  Fillmore,  who,  although  a  Northern  man 
whom  they  never  trusted,  yet  was  so  anxious  for  a  renomi- 
nation  in  1852,  that  he  became  one  of  their  menials,  and 
served  them  much  more  and  further  in  their  designs  than 
General  Tajdor  would  have  thought  of  doing. 

Mr.  Clay  was  quite  old,  in  his  dotage,  at  his  home,  seek- 
ing the  quiet  that  his  age  and  infirmities  required;  but  at 
his  best,  though  suspected,  he  was  always  to  be  depended 
on  to  coax  out  of  the  anti-slavery  people  the  best  pro- 
slavery  and  most  degraded  anti-slavery  concession  that  the 
Northern  leaders  of  all  parties  would  make  to  avert  war 
with  slavery. 

Webster  was  at  Washington,  the  one  possible  leader  before 
Lincoln  who,  if  he  had  possessed  the  courage,  tenacity,  and  in- 
tegrity equal  to  his  high  intellectual  and  commanding  pow- 
ers, could  have  been  the  leader  of  the  people  in  their  grapple 
with  the  evil  monster  ten  years  before  Lincoln;  but  God 
was  building  and  training  the  man  for  the  contest,  and 
Webster,  the  great-minded  man,  so  strong  and  so  well 
qualified  and  prepared,  as  far  as  human  judgment  could 
discern,  was  neither  able  nor  fitted  to  lead  in  the  desperate 
encounter.  He  had  commanding  powers,  was  a  learned  and 
eminent  man,  but  was  failing  in  the  blast  as  others  had 
failed.  Much  to  the  disappointment  and  chagrin  of  the 
devoted  friends  and  followers  of  a  lifetime,  he  fell  a  sacri- 
fice to  the  compromising  tendencies  that  had  ruined  Clay. 
In  the  tangle  of  his  "President-seeking"  ambition,  in  the 
quest  of  a  nomination  which  he  was  never  to  get,  he  spent 
the  closing  years  of  his  life  in  unconcealed  sorrow.  He 
had  the  genius  that  pounded  men's  beliefs  into  a  knowl- 
edge of  the  fitness  and  comprehensiveness  of  our  Consti- 
tution. God,  in  his  wisdom,  no  doubt  sent  him  into  the 
world  to  do  this  very  work;  but  this  wouderful,  talented 
man,  as  well  as  a  genius,  in  place  of  flying  to  the  rescue  and 
being  the  great  leader  of  the  loyal  people  of  the  Nation,  who 


422  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

were  hungering  and  thirsting  for  such  an  one  to  lead,  turned 
his  ambition  and  godlike  powers  from  being  a  leader  without 
a  rival  into  being  a  President-seeking  almoner.  He  thirsted 
and  cringed  to  the  slave-power  for  the  doubtful  achievement 
of  a  Whig  nomination  for  President,  when  he  knew  as  well 
as  any  one  that  the  cautious,  dark-eyed  princess  of  the  slave 
dynasty  usuallj^  selected  the  moldable  men  of  the  North 
for  that  sacrificing  service  from  among  the  pliable  relics 
of  the  Democratic  party,  like  Franklin  Pierce. 

So  Webster  the  Great — for  he  was  truly  so — fell  stricken 
and  unstrung  with  a  too  common  phantasy;  and  when  he 
should  have  been  leading  our  people  to  freedom  and  right- 
eous condemnation  of  slavery,  in  loyal  service  to  the  Con- 
stitution he  had  pillared  in  the  hearts  of  patriotic  men, 
he  driveled  into  senility.  He  engaged  in  lecturing  and  re- 
proving his  countr}anen  for  the  "dangerous  and  unneces- 
sary agitation  of  the  slavery  question  and  useless  talk  against 
slavery,  which,"  said  he,  ''I  verily  believe  would  perish  if 
let  alone  in  its  unequaled  competition  with  free  labor  and 
natural  conditions." 

Webster  passed  as  a  leader,  and,  like  Lear,  was  out  of 
his  time  when  his  great  powers  had  not  only  been  arrested, 
but  were  fading  away.  General  Winfield  Scott  possessed 
something  of  the  qualities  of  a  leader,  and  in  contest  with 
any  form  of  National  destruction  he  would  have  had  the 
courage  and  loyalty  to  sustain  the  Government,  as  he  did 
under  all  circumstances;  but  having  grown  up  with  slavery 
all  about  him,  indifferent  and  ignorant  of  its  most  revolt- 
ing features,  he  was  in  no  sense  the  competent  and  appro- 
priate leader  to  -vvin  the  cordial  support  of  the  anti-slavery 
people  of  the  free  States,  who  were  constantly  being  ani- 
madverted upon  as  a  dangerous  class  of  people. 

Those  who  were  being  classed  as  dangerous,  and  de- 
nounced as  such,  who  were  in  all  parties,  and  in  their  own 
party  in  many  localities,  everywhere  in  hundreds  of  thou- 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  423 

sands,  were  denominated  "Abolitionists,  dangerous  people, 
and  disturbers  of  the  public  peace.''  This  was  done  with 
no  more  proof  of  the  statement  than  the  resolutions  of 
time-serving  political  hirelings  of  the  slave-leaders.  These 
conscientious,  liberty-loving  men,  who  were  Abolitionists 
because  they  believed  in  right  and  justice,  were  in  no  way 
alarmed  or  intimidated  by  the  threats  or  denunciations  of 
Conventions  and  employed  prevaricators.  They  were  the 
body  of  fearless  people  who  were  soon  to  be  needed,  with 
all  their  powers  in  action,  in  forming  or  keeping  alive  any 
party  that  could  hope  to  help  save  the  Nation  against  slavery 
domination,  secession,  or  destruction. 

Clay,  Taylor,  Fillmore,  and  Scott  could  neither  of  them 
gain  the  cordial  good  Avill  and  support  of  the  anti-slavery 
people  because  they  had  lived  under  the  slavery  rule  so 
long,  and  submitted  to  its  behests  so  often,  that  their  minds 
were  blunted  to  the  enormities  of  the  evil.  In  place  of 
denouncing  it  as  wrong,  and  doing  something  for  its  amelio- 
ration or  abolition,  they  contented  themselves  in  denounc- 
ing the  freedom-believing  people  who  desired  to  resist  it 
in  every  way  open  to  them  as  freemen.  Such  being  the  re- 
lation of  the  above  leaders  to  the  issues  of  the  time,  no 
one  of  them  had  the  qualities  and  capacity  to  lead.  Web- 
ster had  thro^\Ti  away  his  opportunity — his  last  one — and 
the  Whig  party,  without  an  available  leader  on  the  absorb- 
ing topic  of  the  time,  dissolved  while  sounding  approval  and 
confidence  in  the  compromise  settlement  of  1850.  No  one 
of  its  divisions  or  factions  sincerely  believed  in  or  intended 
submitting  to  it  longer  than  until  an  opportunity  should 
come  for  more  desirable  afhliation,  when  the  party  died  of 
too  much  slavery  in  1852.  At  the  same  time  the  same 
question  was  sundering  the  Democratic  party  from  top  to 
bottom;  and  many  of  its  old-time  respected  leaders  and 
men  were  being  scattered  and  driven  in  the  storm  of  the 
people's  wrath  like  '"chaff  before  the  wind." 


424  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

The  years  following  the  Mexican  War,  from  1847  to 
1856,  were  the  times  of  party  upheaval,  party  dissolving, 
and  party  reorganization  for  the  actual  contest  awakened 
by  slavery  encroachment  and  its  threatened  extensions.  It 
was  the  time  when  parties  were  casting  off  old  leaders  and 
following  or  training  new  ones.  It  was  the  time  of  bragga- 
docio, bluster,  and  pretense,  when  the  shallowest-headed, 
like  empty  carts,  were  the  loudest  and  most  arrogant,  when 
parties  and  compromisers,  apologists,  and  trimmers,  were 
flying  in  the  political  blasts  like  seagulls  in  a  gale.  It  soon 
came  to  take  more  than  timid  resolutions  or  hired  newspaper 
denunciations  to  sequestrate  a  man  from  society  as  "danger- 
ous" when  he  became  known  as  an  Abolitionist;  and  this 
heroic  distinction  was  lost  when  the  Free  Soil  party  de- 
veloped §0  fast  and  its  members  became  Eepublicans,  be- 
cause there  were  so  many  thousands  of  them.  During  all 
this  period  of  party  wreckage  and  perishing  ambition,  when 
trusted  men  were  falling  by  the  wayside,  and  sullen,  out- 
raged Americans  were  revolting  from  treacherous  party 
rule  by  the  hundred  thousand,  there  was  neither  fault 
nor  failure,  mishap  nor  miscalculation,  in  the  plans,  move- 
ments, management,  and  control  of  the  slave-propaganda. 

The  movement  to  take  care  of,  sustain,  protect,  and 
extend  slavery  went  on  as  regularly  and  with  as  much  or 
more  attention  than  the  regular  operations  of  the  Govern- 
ment. Every  detail,  line,  and  word  of  control  or  direction 
passed  under  the  scrutiny,  supervision,  and  determining 
power  of  their  one  great  leader,  Calhoun,  as  long  as  he 
lived.  Although  never  crowned  or  anointed,  as  the  fashion 
is  in  smaller  despotisms,  nevertheless  he  held  power  as 
absolute  as  the  wildest  and  most  savage  barbarians  that 
once  infested  the  Ehine,  the  Danube,  the  Seine,  or  the 
Thames. 

Calhoun  held  on  to  his  work  and  leadership  in  his  kingly 
way  until  he  was  dying,  in  1852,  so  enfeebled  during  the 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  425 

closing  years  of  his  life  that  he  was  seldom  able  to  deliver 
his  speeches  and  addresses  in  the  Senate.  Not  long  after 
his  death,  Jefferson  Davis  came  into  succession  as  the 
leader,  by  agreement  and  common  consent — one  of  the 
best-trained,  best-informed,  and  most  competent  states- 
men who  ever  exercised  power  or  authority  in  our  Govern- 
ment. He  was  less  of  a  scholar,  debater,  or  reasoner  than 
Calhoun,  but  much  superior  to  him  in  the  details  and 
conduct  of  executive  business;  and,  though  less  accom- 
plished and  plausible  than  Calhoun  in  his  princely,  digni- 
fied manner  and  mien,  he  was  vastly  more  prompt,  direct, 
and  practical  in  his  despotism,  and  as  fearless  and  relent- 
less in  the  exercise  of  it. 

We  have  seen  how  the  great  Whig  leaders  melted  away 
under  the  operation  of  this  slavery  curse,  when  eminent 
and  worthy  leaders  went  down  in  such  rapid  succession. 
Although  the  party  had,  within  its  half-century  of  exist- 
ence, produced  and  drawn  to  it  a  galaxy  of  talented  and 
accomplished  leaders,  they  were  all  scourged,  lacerated, 
wounded,  or  driven  to  an  untimely  end — not  because  they 
had  not  served  the  enormous  evil,  but  because  they  had 
served  it  too  much  and  too  well.  When  they  could  serve 
it  no  longer,  they  were  cast  aside  without  sympathy  or 
remorse.  They  were  men  of  worthy  distinction,  many  of 
whom  have  been  remembered  in  volumes  that  do  not  more 
than  record  their  many  virtues  and  their  services. 

But  it  was  not  alone  in  the  Whig  party  that  the  political 
mortality  was  like  a  fifty  years'  plague  among  its  leaders. 
The  Democratic  party  had  served  slavery  better  and  more 
zealously  through  all  these  years;  and  though  most  of  its 
leaders  were  not  so  distinguished,  able,  or  eminent,  it  had 
maimed,  cast  off,  and  destroyed  three  or  four  times  as 
many  Northern  and  anti-slavery  Democrats  as  it  had  de- 
stroyed Whigs.  The  Democratic  party  had  been  in  political 
control  of  the  Nation  most  of  the  time,  and  it  had  more 


426  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

prominent  men  who,  for  the  promised  distinction,  would 
venture  against  the  real  foe  of  a  true  Democracy.  Of  these 
leaders  there  was  Andrew  Jackson,  who  had  not  served  the 
slave-power  to  his  lasting  detriment,  discomfiture,  or  down- 
fall. Of  those  who  had  reached  high  distinction  the  political 
necrology  Avas  more  notable  and  in  more  regular  succes- 
sion than  that  of  the  Whigs,  There  was  Van  Buren,  the 
ablest  trimmer,  straddler,  and  all-round  business  manager, 
whose  thrifty  and  crafty  mixing  of  money  and  political 
science  was  unsurpassable.  He  and  his  regency  were  played 
off  as  a  pawn  with  which  to  defeat  Cla}^,  when  Polk,  the 
true  and  faithful,  was  trusted  with  high  leadership  in  the 
Texan  and  Mexican  extension,  so  perfectly  planned  and 
executed.  After  Van  Buren  was  William  L.  Marcy,  of  New 
York,  a  well-equipped  statesman,  who  could  not  do  what 
Van  Buren  had  done  so  easily — care  for  and  control  his 
State.  Though  he  served  the  slave-power  as  well  as  the 
renegade  Yankee,  Franklin  Pierce,  and  was  the  strongest 
man,  intellectually,  in  the  Cabinet  he  served;  yet,  as  he 
could  not  fix  and  hold  his  great  State  in  his  political  pocket, 
he  was  laid  aside  for  a  more  promising  victim. 

Along  with  these,  and  before  them — one  of  the  relics  of 
the  days  of  Jackson  and  his  plain,  stubborn  loyalty — was 
Thomas  H.  Benton,  for  thirty  years  senator  from  Missouri. 
He  was  a  man  who  knew  everything  about  the  Government, 
from  its  foundation  up.  From  the  admission  of  Missouri, 
when  his  service  began  in  the  Senate,  he  was,  for  much  of 
the  time,  the  apologist  and  servant  of  the  slave-power, 
yet  never  to  the  point  of  disloyalty;  and  he  could  neither 
be  cajoled,  deceived,  nor  misled. 

Senator  Benton  was  one  of  the  truly  great  men  of  the 
Nation.  He  had  few  equals  in  the  realm  of  real  and  emi- 
nent statesmanship;  and  in  a  life  of  service  and  experience 
devoted  to  his  country  he  had  learned  that  slavery  retarded 
the  growth  of  any  people,  and  that  it  had  to  be  abolished, 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  427 

or  it  would  strangle  what  was  left  of  free  institutions.  He 
had  seen  the  light  of  a  higher  destiny  in  his  autocratic, 
impetuous  way,  not  uncommon  to  leaders  such  as  he  had  been 
for  half  a  century.  He  denounced  and  spurned  the  destroy- 
ing system  from  him,  and  regretted  in  his  age  and  ripened 
wisdom  that  he  had  not  another  life  to  live,  to  contend 
with  the  degraded  labor-robbing  system  and  its  aggres- 
sions against  all  that  was  good  and  commendable  in  free 
government.  Benton  therefore  was  overthrown  by  the  pro- 
slavery  Democracy  of  his  State  and  the  Nation.  He  had 
committed  the  unpardonable  offense  of  disobedience  to  the 
slave-power  in  outspoken  addresses,  in  which  he  said  what 
he  believed  to  be  true  about  it,  for  which  offense  he  was 
never  forgiven.  After  his  defeat  for  the  Senate  he  was 
elected  a  member  of  the  House  of  Eepresentatives  from  St. 
Louis;  but  the  relentless  opposition  of  the  slave-masters 
followed  him,  and  he  was  defeated  for  re-election. 

Thus  driven  from  place  and  power  by  the  leaders  of 
the  heartless  system  he  had  done  so  much  to  build  and 
sustain,  he  was  willingly  and  eagerly  cast  aside.  Instead 
of  this  being  the  drastic  punishment  and  overthrow  that 
would  leave  him  without  name  or  future  mention,  it  en- 
abled him  to  accomplish  the  greatest  achievement  of  his 
life,  in  writing,  from  1853  to  1858,  his  imperishable 
"Thirty  Years  in  the  United  States  Senate."  This  work 
will  be  a  living  memory  for  good  when  nothing  will 
remain  of  Calhoun  except  that  which  is  said  in  mercy 
and    forgiveness. 

Had  Benton,  in  his  youth,  grown  up  in  the  free  States, 
he  could  have  reached  the  highest  position  and  leader- 
ship; but  his  environments  were  against  him.  He  had 
no  benefit  of  free  institutions.  He  was  independent,  and 
soon  became  a  leader  in  the  false  aristocracy  of  slavery.  In 
his  age,  when  the  death-struggle  of  the  system  was  coming, 
when  his  vision  became  clear,  he  could  only  bear  evidence 


428  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

and   put   on   record   the    vileness   and   freedom-destroying 
effects  of  the  bad  system  he  had  served  so  long. 

General  Lewis  Cass,  of  Michigan,  who  held  place  and 
position  throughout  his  long  and  useful  career,  although 
prudent,  careful,  and  conservative,  had  nevertheless  stirred 
up  many  ambitious  men  against  him.  When  he  was  nomi- 
nated for  President  in  1848,  they  were  either  lukewarm 
in  his  support,  as  the  slave-leaders  were,  or  opposed  him 
in  voting  for  Van  Buren,  who  that  year  was  the  Free  Soil 
candidate  for  President,  with  more  desire  to  defeat  Cass 
than  serve  the  party  he  was  posturing  with.  Cass,  there- 
fore, though  an  able,  competent  leader,  with  long  years  of 
experience,  was  wholly  unfitted  to  combine  all  the  patriotic 
elements  of  his  own  and  other  dissolving  factions  against 
the  encroachments  of  the  slave-leaders.  Cass  had  not  been 
as  effectually  removed  and  disabled  as  Benton  was,  but  he 
was  so  broken  by  his  defeat  as  to  be  out  of  hearing  or  con- 
sideration for  any  further  leadership,  being,  in  his  age, 
another  invalided  statesman  who  had  served  the  "domestic 
institution"  so  faithfully  and  so  long  as  to  lose  the  respect 
and  confidence  of  his  own  freedom-believing  and  independ- 
ent-voting people. 

There  remain  Franklin  Pierce,  James  Buchanan,  Judge 
Douglas,  Abraham  Lincoln,  and  Jefferson  Davis,  of  those 
who  were  to  grapple  and  lead  in  the  furious  conflict.  These 
will  be  considered  in  their  appropriate  relation  as  we  pro- 
gress. From  the  beginning  of  the  slavery  difference  and 
dispute,  on  the  adoption  of  the  Constitution,  in  1788,  to 
the  close  of  the  war,  there  were  as  many  as  a  thousand 
able  and  talented  men  in  all  parties  who  differed  and  dis- 
cussed the  system.  To  their  honor  it  can  be  said  that,  out- 
side of  those  who  were  directly  interested  in  slavery  or  the 
trade  that  came  from  its  productions,  very  iew  ever  con- 
sidered it  other  than  a  great  evil  to  be  removed  from  our 
country  in  the  least  harmful  but  most  effective  way. 


CHAPTER  XIX. 

WHILE  peace  negotiations  were  being  concluded  with 
Mexico  in  what  has  become  known  as  the  Guada- 
lupe Hidalgo  treaty,  in  1848,  rich  deposits  of  gold 
were  discovered  in  California.  The  whole  country  was  soon 
agitating  and  discussing  the  discovery,  considering  and  equip- 
ping thousands  of  adventurers  and  emigrants  for  a  move- 
ment over  the  Plains,  on  water  by  the  Isthmus  of  Panama, 
and  shipping  as  it  could  be  had — any  way  to  get  to  Cali- 
fornia, even  by  circumnavigating  the  South  American  Con- 
tinent. 

In  this  way  over  two  hundred  thousand  made  Califor- 
nia their  home  in  the  first  year's  moving  of  the  tide  of 
population.  They  adopted  a  free  State  Constitution  after 
an  earnest  encounter  and  a  very  decisive  victory  over  the 
pro-slavery  party.  These  free  Staters  in  1849-50  were  vig- 
orously demanding  admission  as  a  State.  The  peculiarly- 
unsettled  conditions,  the  rapid  assembling  and  settlement 
of  so  many  and  such  widely-differing  bodies  of  people  and 
individuals,  together  with  their  fast-growing  commerce  and 
business,  required  the  establishment  of  a  State  Govern- 
ment without  delay.  This  was  so  apparent  that  it  was 
soon  conceded  that  the  State  would  be  admitted  without 
obstructive  opposition.  With  the  impediments  of  a  rush- 
ing population,  the  vast  mineral  discoveries,  rich  valleys  of 
land  along  the  coast,  and  the  remote  location,  stimulated 
the  slavery  party  to  enter  into  a  stoutly-contested  effort 
to  fix  slavery  in  this  far-away  region ;  but  for  any  slave- 
owner to  venture  there  with  his  slaves  would  have  been 

429 


430  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

about  equivalent  to  their  liberation.  Even  if  slavery  could 
have  been  fastened  upon  the  State  by  scheming  political 
jugglery  and  the  murder  of  Senator  Broderick,  the  people 
would  soon  have  overturned  the  whole  plan. 

If  the  schemers  could  have  made  California  a  slave 
State,  and  been  able  to  secure  a  pro-slavery  representation 
in  Congress,  they  would  have  been  content  to  hold  it  that 
way  to  preserve  the  political  control  of  the  Government, 
and  would  have  agreed  not  to  antagonize  the  people  of  the 
State  with  the  introduction  of  slavery.  All  this  was  at- 
tempted under  control  and  direction  of  the  pro-slavery 
Democratic  faction,  led  by  one  Dr.  William  Gwin,  of  Vir- 
ginia, who  had  been  made  a  duke  of  something  by  some 
European  mountain  town. 

Slavery  extension  was  defeated  under  the  leadership  of 
David  Broderick.  Gwin  and  Broderick  were  elected  the 
first  senators  from  the  Pacific  Coast.  The  question  of  Gwin's 
ever  having  been  created  a  count  or  a  duke,  as  he  stoutly 
affirmed,  was  referred  to  a  prominent  lawyer  at  Washing- 
ton, with  the  understanding  that,  if  he  held  such  title,  it 
would  be  a  disability  to  his  holding  his  senatorship.  The 
lawyer,  on  ascertaining  the  facts,  reported  that  there  was 
no  existing  disability  to  prevent  Gwin's  holding  the  office, 
that  there  was  no  such  dukedom  or  principality,  and,  inf  eren- 
tially,  that  Gwin  was  more  a  fool  than  a  duke. 

The  demand  for  the  admission  of  California  as  a  free 
State,  the  abundant  mineral  resources  and  great  discoveries 
in  the  ceded  Mexican  territory,  and  the  bitter  and  unex- 
pected defeat  of  the  slave  party  in  California,  decided  a 
sudden  turn  in  the  plans  of  the  slavery-extensionists.  The 
projectors  of  this  powerful,  forming  slave-empire  under- 
stood well  the  absolute  necessity  for  it.  They  understood  as 
well  the  rising  opposition  to  any  further  extension  of  slav- 
ery, and  that  it  could  neither  be  repressed,  resolved,  nor 
terrified  into  submission.     This  reopened  the  whole  subject 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TTME.  431 

of  slavery  in  1849-50,  with  more  agitating  discussion,  more 
avowed  opposition,  and  more  earnest  desire  and  determi- 
nation for  its  restriction  than  had  ever  been  taken  by  the 
people  in  the  former  contention  or  supposed  compromise 
settlements. 

The  truth  is  that  there  had  never  been  any  compromise 
adjustment  that  was  not  held  and  treated  by  the  slaveholders 
as  a  shifting  one,  which  they  could  change,  modify,  or  abro- 
gate at  their  pleasure.  Agreements  with  them,  as  is  always 
the  case  with  grasping,  usurious,  and  avaricious  men,  had 
no  more  influence  over  them  nor  strength  against  them 
than  the  strength  and  power  that  could  be  used  and  that 
would  compel  them  to  abide  by  the  agreements  they  had 
made.     In  this  case,  however,  it  amounted  to  nothing. 

Hence  there  was  widespread  apprehension  and  anxiety 
all  over  the  slaveholding  South.  The  confidence  of  other 
days  had  passed.  The  great  region  taken  in  conquest,  for 
which  the  war  had  been  waged,  was  to  be  opened  to  slavery 
without  interruption,  south  of  the  Missouri  south  line  of 
thirty-six  degrees,  thirty  minutes,  as  far  as  to  the  Pacific 
Ocean.  But  alas  for  all  human  plans!  it  had  been  suddenly 
discovered  to  be  a  vast  mineral  region,  where  a  bondman 
would  not  be  safe  over  night.  The  toiling  miners  and  the 
prospectors,  the  keenest  and  most  alert  of  all  the  roving 
fortune-seekers,  always  ready  for  excitement,  and  eager 
for  new  adventures,  would  have  railroaded  a  black  man 
to  freedom  any  day  as  a  pastime. 

Thus  the  movement  for  extension,  so  auspiciously  be- 
gun and  so  successfully  carried  on  up  to  the  time  for  occu- 
pation, suddenly  and  abruptly  ended  in  the  wave  of  a  West- 
ern moving  multitude  of  miners  and  home-seekers.  The 
great  belt  of  valleys,  rocks,  and  endless  mountain  ranges 
was  not  to  be  the  gateway  of  a  spreading  Western  empire, 
but  the  abutment  and  rugged  boundary  of  slavery,  where 
all  the  wild,  fantastic  dreams  of  profit,  power,  and  regal  splen- 


432  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

dor  would  wither  and  perish.  The  South  was  in  a  state  of  real 
alarm.  Slavery  had  reached  its  Western  limit,  hemmed  in 
by  the  mountaineers,  whose  guns  and  pathways  led  only 
to  freedom. 

The  Constitutional  lawyers,  the  senators,  the  judges, 
the  councilors,  and  the  wise  men  of  the  propaganda — men 
of  standing  and  influence — were  appealed  to  for  help  and 
a  way  out  of  the  impending  restriction.  While  free  States 
and  free  institutions  were  growing  and  spreading  so  fast, 
slavery  would  die  out  unless  it  could  expand  equally,  and 
have  enough  power  to  keep  its  rulers,  agents,  and  servitors 
in  full  control  at  Washington. 

The  distress  signal  of  the  slave-rulers,  big  and  little, 
was  sounded  early  in  1850,  and  the  traffickers  in  humanity 
and  their  puny-minded  sympathizers  were  ordered  and  be- 
sought to  assemble  in  grave  and  solemn  manner,  and  in  the 
most  plausible  and  engaging  demeanor  secure  a  final  ad- 
justment of  all  the  differences  between  slavery  and  free- 
dom and  the  Northern  and  Southern  sections,  which  should 
be  binding  and  inviolable. 

In  this  distress  and  general  anxiety,  the  Thirty-first 
Congress  assembled  in  the  belief  that  it  was  a  time  for  the 
exercise  of  their  most  temperate  consideration,  highest  wis- 
dom, most  patient  investigation,  toleration  of  other  men's 
ideas,  necessities,  and  dangers,  and  moderation  in  every 
feature  that  would  make  or  lead  to  an  amicable  agreement. 
This  was  undoubtedly  the  spirit  of  the  greater  part  of  the 
members  of  that  memorable  Congress.  With  their  light 
and  knowledge,  the  dread  of  approaching  war,  and  the 
strong,  prevailing  sentiment  against  it,  they  did  the  best 
they  could  and  the  best  that  was  possible  at  the  time,  and, 
in  the  providential  unfolding  of  events,  just  what  was  neces- 
sary to  do  to  hold  the  eruption  down  until  other  men  and 
other  leaders  could  grapple  with  the  monster  evil. 

What  they  did  was  formal,  and  if  the  name  of  settle- 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  433 

ment  had  been  taken  from  their  agreements  the  measures 
would  have  been  found  to  leave  the  real  subject  of  slavery 
about  where  it  was  when  they  began.  But  the  name  of 
a  settlement  was  necessary,  if  it  did  nothing  more,  to  calm 
the  agitated  state  of  public  feeling.  But  the  real  condi- 
tion of  the  Nation  and  people  and  their  relation  to  slavery 
and  its  extension  was  little,  if  in  any  way,  changed  by  the 
laws  enacted  which  took  the  sounding  title  of  ''the  Com- 
promise Measures  of  1850.''  As  far  as  could  be  known  by 
the  closest  and  most  careful  observers,  public  or  private 
opinion  had  not  changed  by  the  adoption  of  any  one  of  the 
measures;  and  by  those  best  qualified  to  understand  the 
whole  subject,  it  was  regarded  as  an  agreement  to  keep  the 
peace. 

It  was,  however,  a  grand  assembling  and  an  august  oc- 
casion in  the  passing  of  men  and  issues.  The  wisest,  most 
venerable,  and  most  experienced  men  of  our  country  and 
time  sat  and  deliberated  in  that  famous  council.  Calhoun 
was  there,  infirm  and  dying,  but  with  his  intellect  as  clear 
and  unclouded  at  the  close  as  in  the  beginning  of  his  life- 
time uninterrupted  public  career.  He  was  then  so  infirm 
that  his  voice  was  barely  audible;  but  he  was  still  able  to 
wield  his  unquestioned  leadership,  which  he  held  continu- 
ously from  its  first  well-consolidated  organization,  at  the 
beginning  of  the  century,  as  the  undisputed  ruler  and  dic- 
tator of  the  slave-propaganda. 

Benton  was  there,  threatened,  it  is  true,  but  still  in 
the  exercise  of  his  high  and  independent  powers,  a  Demo- 
crat of  the  Jackson  mold,  whose  mind  was  at  least  open- 
ing to  the  evils  and  disadvantages  to  the  white  people  of 
slavery,  with  its  unpaid  and  degraded  system  of  labor,  that 
would  starve  white  people  out  of  so  fertile  and  resourceful 
a  State  as  Missouri. 

Clay  was  there,  risen  from  his  bed,  to  serve  in  the  great 
council  of  the  Senate,  just  forty  years  after  his  first  ap- 
28 


434  ABEAHAM  LINCOLN. 

Ijearance  in  it  as  one  of  its  yoiingest,  though  always  as 
one  of  its  cordially  accepted  and  welcomed  members.  He 
was  surely  sincere  this  last  time,  and  as  nearly  positive  as 
he  could  ever  be.  He  had  answered  the  urgent  call  of  his 
State  and  the  most  earnest  pleadings  of  his  friends,  North 
and  South,  who  had  been  true  and  faithful  to  him  through- 
out his  long  and  brilliant  career.  He  had  come  out  of  volun- 
tary retirement  for  the  good  of  his  country,  to  help  make 
a  settlement  that  would  avert  the  hostilities  he  had  dreaded 
so  long.  He  was  in  his  age  and  the  closing  years  of  a  truly- 
distinguished  life,  infirm,  but  less  feeble  than  Calhoun,  with 
acumen  as  bright  and  mental  action  as  alert  as  when  he 
was  young.  His  keen  and  shining  talents  and  brightly-pol- 
ished addresses  were  the  highest  achievement  of  any  Amer- 
ican statesmen,  and  he  was  conceded  leadership  by  reason 
of  his  commanding  and  winning  ways  and  grand  appearance 
even  before  he  had  spoken  a  word.  He  was  a  man  whose 
wonderful  control  was  so  far  surpassing  in  all  his  life  that 
no  one  ever  thought  of  meeting  another  man  with  talent 
for  the  complete  leadership  of  men  that  possessed  even  a 
resemblance  of  Clay's  wonderful  gift.  It  was  said  repeat- 
edly in  his  lifetime  that  there  was  no  alternative  of  follow- 
ing Clay,  except  to  hate  him. 

John  J.  Crittenden  was  there,  too,  from  Kentucky,  who 
was  a  respected  leader  and  one  of  the  clearest-headed  of 
the  followers  of  Clay  in  the  Senate.  He  was  an  able  and  ac- 
complished statesman,  but  a  timid  and  temporizing  one, 
who  grew  up  and  held  office  all  through  the  compromising 
concessions  to  slavery. 

The  great  and  majestic  Webster  was  there,  to  engage, 
for  the  last  time,  in  the  debates  and  conclusions  on  the 
floor  of  his  former  glorious  service  in  the  American  Senate. 
There  he  had  won  lasting  and  deserving  fame,  that  even 
his  faithless  desertion  of  his  cause  and  people  in  the  hour 
of  compromising  cowardice  could  not  rob  him  of. 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  435 

Sam  Houston,  of  Texas,  was  there,  who  had,  with  his 
gallant  patriots,  made  a  nation  with  the  domain  of  an  em- 
pire. He  was  a  senator  from  this  newly-acquired  territory, 
which  he  and  his  compatriots  had  won  at  arms,  and 
had  united  to  the  land  of  his  birth,  when  they  turned  over 
their  nation  to  the  Union  as  one  of  its  greatest  States. 
Houston  was  a  real  man,  something  of  the  mold  and  make-up 
of  Benton  and  Jackson,  a  braver  spirit  than  the  former, 
and  a  more  capable  statesman  than  the  latter.  He  was 
gallant  and  daring,  and  a  man  of  the  people  for  his  whole 
lifetime,  and  desiring  to  be  known  as  one  of  them.  He 
had  lived  and  risen  to  real  greatness  with  slavery  all  around 
him,  but  had  grown  above  it,  so  as  to  see  and  measvire  it 
truly  as  it  was — the  crushing  evil  of  the  time.  He  did  his 
best,  and  that  was  a  great  deal,  to  build  up  and  save  the 
Nation  he  loved  so  well.  For  this  he  contended  and  suf- 
fered to  the  end,  to  the  time  in  1860,  when  he  resigned  his 
office  as  governor  rather  than  have  any  share  in  the  mad- 
ness that  was  endeavoring  to  wreck  the  Nation  in  the  de- 
basing as  well  as  the  cruel  system  of  slave-labor.  In  his 
age  he  lived,  as  he  had  ever  done,  a  stalwart  friend  of  his 
country. 

Houston  knew  and  realized  the  truth,  which  thousands 
of  his  Texans  have  since  discovered,  that  slavery  was  the 
most  objectionable  system  for  its  industries  of  all  the  cot- 
ton States.  With  its  varied,  inexhaustible  resources,  its 
healthy  and  salubrious  climate,  and  the  free,  independent 
spirit  of  its  people,  it  was  the  best  adapted  to  free  institu- 
tions and  free  labor  of  all  the  Southern  or  Gulf  States. 
Houston  had  grown  in  his  wisdom  and  experience  to  a  rip- 
ened knowledge,  that  could  comprehend  such  advantages 
as  well  as  enjoy  his  exalted  patriotism.  His  life  was  a  dis- 
tinct American  achievement.  His  place  among  our  leaders 
and  statesmen  and  heroes  is  so  near  the  top  that  the  space 
about  him  will  never  all  be  filled. 


436  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

Salmon  P.  Chase,  of  Ohio,  was  there,  a  senator  who 
had  been  governor  of  his  State.  He  had  been  elected  to 
the  Senate  by  the  Democratic  Legislature  in  1849,  when 
his  anti-slavery  beliefs  were  known  by  all  men.  He  was 
a  man  of  capacity,  learning,  with  a  finished  education,  that 
prepared  and  sustained  him  as  a  leader  among  the  helpers 
who  stood  so  f aithf ully .  in  the  cause.  As  senator,  chief  of 
the  treasury  through  the  war,  and  chief-justice,  he  was 
one  of  our  ablest,  most  clever  men,  who  labored  and  served 
until  the  Nation  was  purged  and  the  people  were  freed 
from  four  centuries  of  wrong  and  oppression. 

Thaddeus  Stevens,  of  Pennsylvania,  was  there — the 
plain,  unpretending  commoner,  the  advocate  and  trusted 
friend  of  his  people.  His  thirty  years'  blow-on-blow  con- 
test and  unflinching  fight  for  freedom  with  the  slave-leaders 
and  his  State's  degenerated  Democracy  marks  the  iSTation's 
survival  and  overthrow  of  the  system  that  was  rotting  out 
the  foundations  of  civil  liberty.  He  was  never  an  apologist, 
a  doubter,  or  a  compromiser  with  wrong.  He  served  men 
and  his  country  as  his  conscience  bade  him,  in  zeal  and  ear- 
nestness that  hesitated  at  no  opposition,  and  with  the  ex- 
tremely good  sense  to  be  always  on  the  right  side  of  free 
institutions  and  the  rights  of  men.  He  was  always  in  the 
foremost  division  of  those  most  keenly  alive  to  the  faintest 
cry  of  the  humblest  and  weakest  of  all  that  were  oppressed. 
He  was  there  on  the  field  of  his  labors,  to  contend  for  men 
and  their  rights  and  for  the  integrity  of  the  Nation  against 
all  its  foes.  He  fought  the  shoddy  and  the  rotted  and  the 
damaged  food  and  equipment  in  the  hurried  work  of  gath- 
ering, handling,  and  furnishing  the  immense  supplies  that 
were  needed  for  the  men  who  were  fighting  in  the  cause 
of  the  Nation's  liberty.  He  was  the  constant  dread  of  the 
lobbyists,  with  their  attachment  of  brokers  and  usurers,  who 
discredited  greenbacks,  saying  they  were  good  enough  to 
pay  for  our  bonds  and  the  soldiers  in  the  ranks,  but  not  good 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME  437 

enough  to  pay  the  capitalists,  until  they  were  made  redeem- 
able in  gold  by  act  of  Congress,  in  1869.  To  his  lasting 
credit  and  honor,  he  had  the  integrity,  courage,  and  man- 
hood to  denounce  their  financial  operations  as  a  crime.  His 
record  of  service  for  labor  and  laboring  men  and  in  the 
interests  of  humanity  was  so  stainless  that  the  worshipers 
of  the  golden  calf  and  the  importers  of  cheap  labor  from 
Europe  have  let  him  rest  unmolested. 

William  H.  Seward  was  in  that  famous  council,  a  mem- 
ber of  the  Senate  that  was  full  of  the  memories  and  vic- 
tories of  its  industrious  men,  passed  and  passing.  Calhoun 
closed  his  career  amid  the  debates  on  the  last  slavery  com- 
promises of  the  seventy  years'  dispute.  Clay,  Webster,  and 
Benton  lived  only  a  few  short  years  afterwards.  They  were 
a  quaternion  of  the  ablest  men  that  ever  graced  our  Senate, 
who  left  nothing  unsettled  which  the  highest,  most  tena- 
cious, and  learned  disputing  could  fix  and  determine. 
Senator  Seward  was  born  in  Orange  County,  New  York, 
in  1801.  He  was  educated  at  Union  College,  and  began 
the  practice  of  law  in  1823.  He  entered  upon  his  political 
career  almost  as  soon,  perhaps  about  1824,  when  he  began 
making  speeches  against  the  "Albany  Eegency,"  as  the 
Democratic  State  Committee  was  denominated.  In  1830 
he  was  elected  to  the  State  Senate,  his  first  office.  In  that 
service  he  originated  and  effected  the  passage  of  a  system 
of  laws  for  the  restriction  and  control  of  corporations,  which 
were  held  to  be  fair  and  equitable  in  their  day. 

In  1834,  Mr.  Seward  was  defeated  for  governor  by  Marcy, 
Democrat,  whom  he  defeated  afterwards,  being  elected  gov- 
ernor in  1838.  Many  wise  measures  of  administrative  re- 
form were  inaugurated  during  his  term  of  office.  He  was 
re-elected  in  1840.  The  substantial  reforms  which  he  rec- 
ommended included  an  enlargement  of  the  Erie  Canal,  the 
entire  obliteration  of  all  laws  for  imprisonment  for  debt, 
and  enlargement  and  extension  of  the  common  schools.     A 


438  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

Constitutional  Convention  was  provided  for  by  act  of  the 
Legislature,  and  met  in  1846,  when  these  reforms  were 
embodied  in  the  fundamental  laws  of  New  York. 

He  became  distinguished  as  a  leader  in  the  Whig  party, 
and  entered  zealously  into  the  campaigns  for  Clay,  in  1844, 
and  Taylor,  in  1848,  openly  belonging  to  the  anti-slavery 
faction  from  the  beginning,  as  against  Fillmore,  who  took 
the  conservative  side.  Seward,  like  Chase,  became  noted 
for  defending  fugitive  slaves,  taking  every  case  that  came 
up  in  the  State  of  New  York,  and  assisting  Chase  in  Ohio, 
contending  in  the  courts  that  slavery  was  the  creature  of 
local  laws,  and  that  alone;  and  that  a  man  once  a  slave, 
when  within  the  boundaries  of  a  free  State,  was  a  free 
man,  and  that  he  could  not  be  remanded  into  slavery,  be- 
cause the  local  law  of  New  York  or  Ohio  had  as  efEectually 
liberated  him  as  the  code  of  Virginia  or  Kentucky  had  en- 
slaved him. 

This  was  the  law  as  declared  by  the  English  courts  in 
the  preceding  century,  as  we  have  related.  They  held  also 
that  the  Fugitive-slave  Law  and  all  laws  for  the  capture  and 
return  of  fugitive  slaves  were  unconstitutional,  and  not 
binding  in  the  free  States ;  that  Congress  held  no  authority 
to  reduce  men  to  service  or  slavery  where  the  laws  of  a 
State  did  not  authorize  it,  and  cited  in  support  of  the  cor- 
rectness of  this  construction  "the  famous  Virginia  and 
Kentucky  Eesolutions  of  1798,"  called  "the  State-rights 
Eesolutions." 

These  resolutions  held  that,  in  the  matter  of  any  differ- 
ence or  disagreement  between  the  General  Government  and 
any  State,  or  in  the  same  differences  between  States,  the 
law  of  the  State  was  supreme  within  its  jurisdiction.  This 
assertion  of  law  on  the  part  of  Seward,  Chase,  and  many 
others,  did  much  to  alarm  the  South,  and  force  the  demand 
that  brought  about  the  so-called  Compromise  Measures  of 
1850.      These   Virginia   Resolutions,   as   construed   by   the 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  439 

slaveholders,  further  declared  that  when  any  State  could 
get  no  redress  from  its  real  or  supposed  grievances,  one 
of  its  reserved  rights  was  that  it  could  withdraw  or  secede 
from  the  Union. 

Thus  in  the  years  following  the  Mexican  War  the  slave- 
power  was  forced  into  the  dilemma  of  submitting  to  the 
natural  and  political  restrictions  of  their  institution  on  the 
West  and  Southwest,  or  of  making  and  remolding  the  laws 
of  the  Nation  on  the  subject  of  slavery,  so  that  slaves  might 
be  owned  and  held  in  every  State  and  Territory  of  the 
Union.  The  Supreme  Court  had  been  made  up  and  care- 
fully constructed,  both  as  to  members  and  their  residence, 
so  that  in  1850  it  was  wholly  subservient  to  Calhoun  and  his 
successors,  thus  forestalling  the  action  of  the  court  in  the 
certainty  that  a  decision  fastening  slavery  on  the  Nation 
would  be  forthcoming  whenever  it  became  prudent  and  nec- 
essary to  promulgate  it. 

The  agitation  in  1848-50  was  rousing  up  the  people  all 
over  the  free  States,  and  among  prudent  men  throughout 
the  border  States  the  sentiment  against  slavery  extension 
and  the  division  between  the  extensionists  and  anti-slavery 
people  was  increasing  and  more  sharply  defined  every  day. 
Indignation-meetings  were  being  held  all  over  the  free  and 
in  parts  of  the  border  States.  The  resistance  was  strong, 
stubborn,  and  emphatic,  and  was  certain  to  increase  to  a 
higher  pitch  if  the  threatened  slave-catching  policy  was 
carried  out. 

The  times  were  ominous  indeed.  The  tongues  of  millions 
were  loosened,  and  the  slave-leaders  realized  better  than 
their  opposing  factions  did  that  the  time  was  at  hand  for 
the  final  contest  in  this  country  on  the  slavery  issues. 
They  had  control  of  the  Government  in  all  its  branches,  and 
felt  assured  that  they  could  hold  it  for  some  years,  regard- 
less of  the  action  of  the  older  parties  then  in  existence, 
that  were  wholly  managed  at  their  bidding.     They  could 


440  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

3'et  command  all  the  legislation  thej^  desired,  and  force 
parties  to  their  support.  In  this  condition,  when  all  other 
things  were  equal,  they  preferred  the  use  and  control  of 
the  Democratic  party,  because  of  the  better  training  and  dis- 
cipline of  the  organization.  Still,  under  the  fear  that  one 
or  other  House  of  Congress  might  be  carried  against  them, 
they  demanded  and  secured  the  passage  of  what  were  after- 
wards known  as  the  Compromise  Measures  of  1850.  Mr. 
Seward  was  elected  a  senator  from  New  York  in  1849,  and 
was  there  a  member  with  the  great  statesmen  of  that  age, 
to  begin  his  stubborn  contest  with  slarery. 

Soon  after  the  meeting  of  Congress  in  special  session, 
March,  1850,  Clay,  who  was  still  the  master  compromiser, 
reported  a  bill  embodying  the  proposed  settlement,  contain- 
ing five  separate  acts  on  as  many  subdivisions  of  the  sub- 
ject. These  were  all  embraced  in  one  proposed  plan.  They 
were:  First,  the  admission  of  California  at  once  as  a  free 
State;  second.  New  Mexico  and  Utah  were  to  be  organized 
as  Territories,  under  Mexican  law  on  the  subject  of  slavery, 
which  prohibited  it;  third,  a  more  restrictive  Fugitive-slave 
Law  in  accordance  with  the  Southern  demands  was  the  prin- 
cipal one,  under  which  any  Negro  could  be  remanded  to 
or  taken  into  slavery  by  any  United  States  commissioner 
or  justice  of  the  peace.  The  magistrate  was  to  receive  ten 
dollars  in  case  the  alleged  fugitive  was  remanded  or  sent 
into  slavery,  or  five  dollars  in  case  he  was  set  at  liberty. 
No  jury  trial  was  provided  for,  and  the  accused  black  man 
or  mulatto  could  be  taken  before  as  many  different  magis- 
trates as  the  assumed  owner  or  marshal  determined  to  take 
him.  In  the  enforcement  of  this  high-handed  outrage 
against  the  Negro  race,  slave  or  free,  the  United  States  mar- 
shal, or  any  of  his  deputies,  had  authority  to  enforce  the 
service  of  any  citizen  to  assist  in  capturing  or  holding  any 
suspected  fugitive.  Fourth,  slavery  was  not  to  be  inter- 
fered with  in  the  District  of  Columbia,  and  the  traffic  of 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME,  441 

soiling  Negrocp  between  the  States  was  lo  continue  unmo- 
lested. Fifth,  the  State  of  Texas  received  ten  million  dol- 
lars for  what  was  called,  in  the  language  of  the  act,  "re- 
muneration" for  the  rectification  of  the  boundary-line  be- 
tween Texas,  Mexico,  and  the  United  States."  In  view  of 
the  former  settlement  upon  its  admission,  Texas  retained 
the  ownership  and  control  of  all  its  public  lands,  then  equal 
to  the  area  of  three  of  our  largest  States.  In  this  way 
Texas  was  munificently  cared  for  in  the  compromise. 

As  soon  as  this  measure,  called  the  "Omnibus  Bill,"  was 
reported,  the  furious  discussion  began.  To  say  that  it  be- 
came the  most  excited  and  fiery  dispute  that  was  ever  held 
on  the  Continent  would  only  be  repeating  what  was  thought 
of  it  at  the  time  and  for  many  years  afterwards.  The  con- 
test over  it  continued  until  past  the  middle  of  summer.  It 
would  be  idle  to  attempt  any  lengthy  review  of  it;  for  it 
would  fill  a  dozen  books.  Calhoun  died  in  its  progress,  and 
Jefferson  Davis  succeeded  him  as  the  Southern  leader. 
President  Taylor  was  known  to  be  opposed  to  the  agree- 
ment; but  he,  too,  died,  July  9,  1850,  during  the  progress 
of  the  controversy,  and  was  succeeded  by  President  Fill- 
more. 

Congress  adjourned  in  August,  with  the  distress  of  the 
worn  and  harassing  dispute  still  uppermost  in  the  minds 
of  those  who  could  be  tortured  into  the  belief  that  these 
measures  were  absolutely  necessary  to  save  the  country. 
Without  faith,  and  much  more  of  it  than  ever  came  to  the 
lot  of  the  common  people,  these  earnest  debates,  furious 
excitements,  palavers,  proposed  and  accepted  settlements, 
settled  nothing.  Not  a  single  member  of  the  Administration 
or  either  House  of  Congress  had  changed.  If  President 
Taylor  had  lived,  the  measures  would  not  have  passed  in 
the  form  they  did,  not  because  of  his  anti-slavery  opinions — 
for  he  had  none,  and  was  a  Louisiana  slaveholder — but  he 
knew  all  the  facts,  and  was  independent  enough  to  stand 


442  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

by  his  honest  belief,  regardless  of  the  slave-power  or  all  the 
Southern  leaders.  He  was  a  sensible  man,  and  always  de- 
spised shams  and  attempted  deceits,  and  he  would  not  have 
consented  to  the  payment  of  any  sum  to  Texas,  or  to  the 
outrageous  provisions  of  the  slave-catching  law,  because 
its  provisions  were  so  obviously  unjust.  These  outrageous 
measures  were  conceded  through  the  demand  of  the  slave- 
holders, to  whom  the  sharpened  slave-catcher's  dragnet  law 
gave  all  the  advantages  over  any  terrified  and  unsuspecting 
Negro.  The  reputation  and  standing  of  those  who  agreed 
to  these  pretentious  settlements  fell  like  ripened  grain  be- 
fore the  sickle  all  over  the  free  States  and  wherever  honest 
men  were  permitted  freedom  of  speech.  Avarice  had  over- 
reached all  bounds  of  sense  or  prudence;  and  these  horrible 
laws,  in  place  of  benefiting  the  slaveholders  in  the  capture 
and  return  of  fugitives,  aroused  the  people  in  a  storm  that 
could  not  be  quelled. 

There  can  be  little  doubt  that  the  passage  and  attempt 
to  enforce  this  slave-catching  law  did  more  to  arouse  public 
opinion  against  slavery  and  open  resistance  to  its  outrageous 
demands,  than  the  pleadings  and  arguments  of  earnest  men 
had  done  for  half  a  century.  The  appearance  of  the  slave- 
catching  officers  in  pursuit  of  some  helpless  Negro  was  the 
signal  for  some  kind  of  resistance,  which  was  usually  suc- 
cessful in  rescuing  the  runaway,  and  turning  the  community 
into  as  active  Abolitionists  as  the  slaveholders  were  propa- 
gandists. 

He  was  a  poor  and  indifferent  speaker,  indeed,  in  those 
days  who  could  not  arouse  the  ire  and  indignation  of  the 
people  to  resolute  and  unshaken  resistance  against  the  at- 
tempt to  enforce  "the  infamous  slave-catcher's  law,"  which 
made  "every  citizen  a  dog  at  the  bidding  of  the  slave- 
catchers."  Calhoun,  Davis,  Benjamin,  Toombs,  and  their 
followers,  and  the  spirit  of  evil  that  enslaved  men,  could 
not  have  framed,  built,  or  conjured  into  existence  a  more 


I 


TEE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  443 

certain  provocative  of  the  pending  terrible  crisis  between 
slavery  and  freedom. 

In  their  eagerness  the  slave-leaders  prematurely  pro- 
voked the  crisis^  and  invited  the  conflict.  The  number  of 
fugitives,  never  estimated  at  above  thirty  thousand,  was  in- 
significant when  compared  to  the  millions  held  to  slavery 
who  were  so  rapidly  increasing.  Among  those  who  were 
best  informed  in  the  border  States  there  was  never  any 
doubt  that,  the  number  of  free  Negroes  captured  and  sold 
South  more  than  quadrupled  all  those  escaping  from  slavery, 
for  '"the  free  nigger'  arrested  had  little  chance  of  freedom 
before  a  court,  where  slavery  was  held  to  be  a  "divine 
institution."  The  marshal  and  slave-catchers  could  always 
prove  him  to  be  an  escaped  slave. 

By  the  example  of  the  founders  of  our  country  and  the 
humane  slaveholders  of  that  era,  hundreds  of  thousands  of 
slaves  had  been  manumitted  where  they  and  their  descend- 
ants were  still  living.  When  slavery  became  so  much  more 
profitable,  several  States  changed  their  relation  to  it  so  as 
to  prohibit  by  law  the  manumission  of  slaves,  and  some 
States  further  south  prohibited  the  residence  of  free  Ne- 
groes in  them.  It  was  these  freedmen  and  their  children, 
or  descendants  principally,  that  the  drag-net  of  Fugitive- 
slave  Laws  was  made  to  catch;  and  the  helpless  Negroes, 
who  had  no  rights  at  law,  who  could  not  appear  as  witnesses, 
without  means  and  under  the  ban  of  wrought-up  sentiment 
against  them,  were  remanded  by  the  court  about  as  regularly 
as  they  were  accused  and  arrested.  In  many  such  a  court 
they  had  a  rousing  fit  of  dissipation  for  every  '^'nigger" 
taken  from  that  mockery  of  justice  to  the  hell  of  bondage 
on  a  cotton  or  sugar  plantation. 

Because  these  freed  people  in  many  instances  were  flying 
from  a  fate  more  dreaded  than  death,  and  frequently  getting 
away,  the  man  hunters  wanted  to  be  more  sure  of  their 
victims,  and  demanded  such  a  one-sided  law  as  the  vicious 


444  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

one  of  1850.  In  most  free  State  comnmnities  it  was  re- 
garded so  unjust  and  outrageous,  that  it  aroused  the  people 
against  it,  and  nothing  short  of  superior  force  could  have 
maintained  it. 

In  their  haughty,  imperious  demands  these  slave-masters 
invited  the  conflict.  They  made  threats,  and  through  brow- 
beating and  persuasions  of  various  kinds  secured  the  passage 
of  the  law.  If  it  had  been  enforced  and  observed  as  law 
should  be,  it  would  have  made  all  the  States  and  Territories 
hunting-grounds  for  the  slave-master,  his  menials  and  his 
hounds. 

This  was  done  at  a  time,  too,  of  such  rapid  development 
in  the  free  States,  when  they  were  busy  and  contented  and 
occupied  with  their  own  growing  wants  and  necessities,  they 
had  with  few  exceptions  decided  that  although  slavery  was 
a  disturbing  element  in  government,  and  a  very  objection- 
able system  to  most  of  them,  yet  for  the  sake  of  peace  they 
would  not  allow  any  interference  with  it  where  it  existed. 
Thej'  would  probably  have  submitted  to  its  extension  on  the 
line  of  the  Missouri  Compromise,  if  the  South  had  been  con- 
tent to  let  it  remain  under  such  adjustment. 

The  slave  masters,  confident  of  their  strength  with  con- 
trol of  the  Administration,  Fillmore  having  succeeded  Tay- 
lor, felt  more  freedom  from  restraint  than  ever,  and  passed 
their  fugitive-slave-hunting  law.  To  the  people  of  the  free 
States  it  came  as  the  gauntlet  of  defiance,  not  thrown  on 
the  ground  merely,  but  in  their  faces.  Peaceful  as  they  were, 
they  immediately  took  it  up,  and  engaged  in  the  contest 
for  human  rights  as  earnestly  and  stubbornly  as  the  slave- 
holders did  on  their  side  of  the  contention.  They  deliber- 
ately protested  that  their  slave-hunting  law  should  not  be 
executed  in  the  free  States. 

Congress  continued  to  be  the  arena  of  men  differing  and 
disputing,  seldom  uniting  for  any  purpose,  or  in  any  measure 
for  the  general  good,  but  "to  hold  and  defend  my  side  as 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  445 

well  as  you  do  yonrs."  The  slave  adventurers  had  gone  too 
far,  much  beyond  what  the  more  prudent  of  them  consid- 
ered wise  and  feasible.  They  had  provoked  the  storm  too 
soon.  They  had  even  run  counter  to  the  judgment  of  sober, 
conservative  men  in  their  own  section,  in  their  desire  to 
assure  the  safety  of  their  institution. 

The  free  State  people  were  an  independent,  free-think- 
ing, free-discussing,  free-determining,  and  free-settling  sort 
of  a  body  politic.  They  took  up  the  subject  of  the  slave- 
catchers'  law  and  its  correlative  questions  involved.  One 
of  the  slave  captors  said  in  a  higher  court,  when  questioned 
as  to  the  purpose  of  the  law,  "It  means  to  go  and  catch  a 
nigger  and  hold  him  wherever  you  get  him."  These  people 
discussed  and  determined,  for  instance,  that  the  Virginia 
Eesolutions  were  correct,  in  the  truth  that  all  the  States 
were  equal,  and  consequently  if  Virginia  could  enslave  a 
man,  Ohio  or  Illinois  could  as  well  make  a  free  man  of  him, 
Avhenever  and  wherever  he  came  under  their  jurisdiction. 
They  held  that  Congress  could  not  lawfully  enslave  a  man, 
as  no  such  power  existed,  and  the  Constitution  in  no  way 
conferred  such  right  or  authority.  Such  an  obnoxious  sys- 
tem as  slavery  could  only  exist  by  the  constant  operation 
of  local  law.  This  being  true,  the  Fugitive-slave  Law  was 
unconstitutional  and  void  as  far  as  it  might  be  attempted 
to  remand  a  man  into  slavery  from  the  free  States  of  Ohio 
or  Illinois,  by  reason  of  the  presumed  supremacy  of  the 
laws  of  the  slave  State  without  national  authority  to  enforce 
it.  Every  man  in  the  free  States  .being  free,  one  as  much 
as  the  other,  there  could  be  no  slaves  to  remand,  for  slavery 
did  not  and  could  not  exist  within  these  or  any  of  the  free 
States;  and  these  free  citizens  were  not  going  to  engage  in 
the  groveling  occupation  of  slave-catching.  These  people 
discussed  too,  and  rejected,  the  pretentious  demand  for  a 
national  remanding  slave  law  by  those  who  scarcely  be- 
lieved in  nationality  under  the  Constitution,  but  held  more 


446  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

loyalty  to  the  Virginia  Eesolutions  of  1798,  which  boldly 
asserted  the  right  of  a  State's  withdrawal  or  secession  from 
the  Union.  So  the  firebrand  of  the  sharpened  slave-catchers' 
law  was  taken  np  and  discussed,  and  thrown  back  in  the 
face  of  the  slave-extending  propaganda. 

There  were  many  thousands  of  free  Negroes  in  the  bor- 
der States,  as  related.  These  people,  great  and  small,  young 
and  old,  from  1845  to  18G0,  were  worth  from  one  hundred 
to  fifteen  hundred  dollars  apiece  in  the  cotton  and  sugar 
States,  according  to  their  qualifications  and  fitness  for  labor 
on  the  plantations.  When  we  consider  that  it  was  cheaper 
and  no  more  serious  offense,  and  a  hundred  times  less  dan- 
gerous business,  to  steal  a  free  Negro  from  Virginia,  Ken- 
tucky, or  Missouri,  or  from  the  free  States  along  the  Ohio 
Elver,  than  it  was  to  take  one  from  the  perilous  African 
coast  through  patrolling  British  and  American  fleets,  it  can 
easily  be  understood  why  the  powerful  body  of  slave-dealers 
demanded  such  a  dragnet,  a  velocity-moving  and  virtually 
slave-making  fugitive  law. 

It  was  said  in  the  slang  of  the  time  that  there  were 
"millions  in  it,"  and  there  is  no  doubt  of  its  absolute  truth. 
It  was  coming  to  be  publicly  defended  by  many  of  the  lead- 
ers in  the  Gulf  States,  as  much  more  humane  "to  take 
Negroes  from  the  border  States  than  from  Africa,  for  the 
perils  were  less  than  bringing  them  from  Africa."  This 
justification  of  kidnaping  men  and  women  had  the  benefit 
of  not  having  so  many  guns  pointing  the  wrong  way  in  the 
man-stealing  business,  which  was  very  much  to  the  comfort 
and  ease  of  mind  of  the  slave-dealer.  It  must  not  be  under- 
stood that  the  border  State  slaveholders  engaged  in  such 
nefarious  business,  although  profiting  by  their  slave  raising 
and  selling,  as  they  did  by  their  cattle-growing.  They  were 
as  a  body  in  society  reputable  and  honorable.  Neither  must 
it  be  forgotten  that  the  slave-traders  were  a  class  who  were 
far  below  the  men  they  sold,  in  character  and  sometimes 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  447 

intelligence,  and  were  unused  to  honorable  mention  any- 
where, even  on  the  Gulf  plantations. 

It  should  be  observed  that  many  writers  of  the  events 
and  happenings  of  those  stirring  times  have  often  repre- 
sented the  division  for  war  as  coming  on  unexpectedly  and 
resulting  from  accidental  causes,  and  not  as  the  result  of 
plans  and  deliberately-laid  schemes  or  courses  of  action. 
It  is  true  there  were  people  then  as  now,  who  were  so  care- 
less and  heedless  as  to  have  small  knowledge  or  concern 
in  current  affairs,  and  there  were  leaders  and  others  almost 
without  number,  who  were  often  misled  themselves,  but 
were  more  often  endeavoring  to  mislead  the  people;  but 
this  was  incidental  and  not  accidental,  for  there  have  been, 
and  ever  will  be,  such  men  in  abundance. 

The  leaders  who  planned  the  protection  of  slavery  in 
the  beginning,  and  their  successors  who  later  planned  for 
power  and  its  extension  and  supremacy,  were  never  without 
full  and  ample  preparation  for  the  future.  Calhoun,  the 
Ehetts,  Hunter,  Mason,  Toombs,  Benjamin,  Stephens,  Davis, 
and  the  few  whom  they  confided  in,  were  never  in  doubt  or 
uncertainty  in  plans,  purposes,  or  course  of  conduct.  There 
were  times  when  unforeseen  natural  and  providential  ob- 
stacles, such  as  the  discovery  of  extensive  mineral  wealth  in 
the  newly-acquired  Mexican  territory,  the  uncertain  action 
of  the  free  State  people,  the  doubt  of  how  far  to  rely  on 
willing  and  half-willing  leaders  in  the  free  States,  did  some- 
what confuse  them,  but  only  temporarily.  In  their  high 
design  the  slavery  institution,  with  its  propaganda  for  its 
care,  extension,  and  ascendency,  was  as  complete,  far-seeing, 
far-reaching,  puissant,  and  powerful  as  the  circumstances 
and  the  minds  of  its  able  and  thoroughly  trained  and  ex- 
perienced leaders  could  make  it.  Its  defeat  and  disaster  in 
the  end  was  in  no  sense  due  to  the  lack  of  intellectual  capac- 
ity and  management  on  the  part  of  its  leaders. 

There  was  never  a  time  in  the  progress  of  the  half- 


448  ABBAHAM  LINCOLN. 

century  contest  on  this  vital  issue  when  the  patriotic  leaders 
of  the  other  side,  the  believers  in  the  greatness,  integrity, 
and  continuity  of  our  country,  were  not  as  well  apprised  of 
their  progress  and  their  intentions  and  their  determined 
lines  of  policy  as  they  were  themselves.  iVs  sure  as  they 
had  plans  and  purposes,  so  surely  did  Jackson,  Benton,  Cass, 
Clay,  Webster,  Chase,  Seward,  Douglas,  and  Lincoln  fully 
understand  and  comprehend  them. 

When  the  compromises  were  over  and  the  slavery  ques- 
tion was  "settled  permanentl}^,"  we  had  this  Fugitive-slave 
Law,  which  to  many  a  softened  and  wilting  statesman  was  a 
more  ragged  and  rasping  garment  than  the  shirt  that  poor 
old  ISTessus  had  a  desire  to  dispose  of.  This  much  that  has 
been  engaging  our  attention  here,  and  the  admission  of 
Texas,  her  public  lands  and  her  ten  million  dollars,  were  the 
assets  which  slavery  got  in  the  final  settlement  and  rounding 
up  compromise  of  1850. 

Freedom  and  free  institutions  had  gained  the  admission 
of  California  as  a  free  State,  as  was  related  every  time  when 
the  benefits  to  the  free  States  were  enumerated,  just  as 
though  California  could  have  been  other  than  a  free  State, 
where  the  majority  in  favor  of  it  was  so  overwhelming  as 
to  be  beyond  question,  and  where  no  slaveholder  would  risk 
his  slave  in  it  for  an  hour.  Hence  this  was  one  of  freedom's 
victories  won  long  before  the  compromise. 

The  slave-trade,  but  not  slaver}',  had  been  abolished  in 
the  District  of  Columbia.  This  was  horn-blowed  as  a  won- 
derful concession  to  freedom,  but  aside  from  the  name  of 
it  and  the  disgrace  of  its  ever  having  been  needed,  there  was 
little  or  nothing  in  it,  because  as  freedom's  advocates  became 
bolder  in  Washington  the  danger  of  expediting  a  likely  or 
independent  slave  man  to  Canada,  where  there  were  no 
remanding  treaties  or  Fugitive-slave  Laws,  it  was  becoming 
prudent  and  common  to  "keep  our  niggers  out  of  that  Abo- 
lition hole  at  the  Capital." 


THE  MEN  OF  HT^  TIME.  449 

Alexandria,  just  across  the  Potomac  in  full  sight,  was  as 
good  a  slave-market,  and  the  slave-code  of  Virginia  was 
much  better  for  "holding  a  nigger"  in  custody.  The  police 
system  of  Washington  was  about  all  demonstration,  parade, 
brass  buttons,  and  visored  caps;  whereas,  the  Virginia  code 
and  its  trained  men  would  "hold  a  nigger  until  he  was  sold 
or  dead,"  and  was  about  as  much  ahead  of  the  Washington 
City  police  and  their  policy  and  regulations  "for  keeping 
niggers  safely,"  as  an  express  train  is  better  than  a  one-ox 
North  Carolina  cart  for  speed. 

So  we  find  that  this  concession  to  freedom  was  little 
more  than  an  empty  sound,  and  that  the  free  State  people 
had  not  made  any  progress  in  achieving  the  abolition  of 
slavery  in  the  District  and  Capital  City  of  the  Nation,  and 
had  gained  little  except  the  shifting  of  the  Washington  slave 
market  to  Alexandria.  More  slaves  would  have  been  liber- 
ated by  the  police  inefficiency  and  negligence,  and  the  more 
open  route  to  New  York  and  through  it  to  Canada,  by  leav- 
ing the  Capital  slave-market  unmolested.  In  summing  up, 
this  was  found  to  be  another  almost  valueless  measure,  for 
the  traffic  in  Negroes  between  the  States  was  not  interfered 
with. 

There  was,  besides,  the  organization  of  the  Territories  of 
New  Mexico  and  Utah,  with  no  reference  to  slavery  in  the 
enabling  acts,  leaving  the  local  Mexican  law  undisturbed, 
under  which  slavery  did  not  exist.  This  was  held  to  be  one 
of  the  advantages  gained  for  freedom  and  free  institutions 
in  these  compromises.  Perhaps  it  may  have  been  so.  It 
would  be  difficult,  in  the  entire  change  of  political  control 
and  management  of  the  slavery  question  in  the  Territories, 
which  came  so  soon  after  this  declared  settlement,  to  esti- 
mate and  understand  what  were  helps  to  freedom,  and  what 
were  not. 

There  were  hidden  purposes  and  very  uncertain  results 
in  these  territorial  organizing  acts,  which  when  they  are 
29 


450  A  BE  A  HAM  LINCOLN. 

explained  with  their  accompanying  facts,  the  reader  can 
estimate  the  benefits  accruing  to  freedom  as  well  as  any 
one.  The  natural  obstacles  of  mineral  belts  and  immense 
mountain  ranges  had  arrested  the  extension  of  slavery 
directly  west  and  southwest.  Mountain  ranges  have  never 
been  favorable  localities  for  slavery  or  bondage  of  any  kind, 
of  which  history  gives  many  examples.  African  slavery  was 
never  safe,  and  was  not  a  luxury  to  the  slave-owners  in  our 
mountain  ranges  of  Virginia,  West  Virginia,  Xorth  Caro- 
lina, Tennessee,  and  Kentuck}'.  The  good  Lord  knew  this 
when  the  mountains  were  hoisted  into  the  upper  air,  with 
their  valleys,  gorges,  rock-bound  retreats,  and  forest-covered 
recesses,  to  be  the  refuge  and  hope  of  freedom,  which  they 
have  remained. 


CHAPTER  XX. 

THE  slave-leaders,  realizing  the  inhospitable  nature  of  the 
southwest  mountain  and  mineral  regions  to  their  insti- 
tution, but  as  fully  impressed  with  the  belief  that  it 
must  be  extended  or  perish,  suddenly,  even  before  the  com- 
promises were  so  positively  demanded  in  1850,  changed  their 
plans  for  the  movement  of  slavery  into  our  new  Territories 
to  the  south  westward  to  forcing  it  inward  and  northwest- 
ward into  the  Territories  of  Kansas  and  iSTebraska — a  col- 
lateral movement  which  had  been  planned  by  them  as  far 
back  as  1820,  when  Missouri  was  admitted  as  a  slave  State. 

At  the  time  all  the  vast  region  westward  and  up  the 
Missouri  Valley  to  the  mountains  was  called  a  sandy  desert 
plain;  however,  these  experienced  slave-leaders  knew  it  to  be 
a  region  of  rich,  fertile  valleys  and  extending  areas,  on 
which  millions  of  buffalo,  deer,  elk,  and  innumerable  ani- 
mals lived  and  thrived,  and  on  which  thousands  of  Indians 
fattened  and  subsisted  annually.  This  knowledge  came  to 
them  through  the  patient  investigation,  daring  expeditions, 
careful  explorations,  and  the  accurate  reports  made  every 
year  by  our  army  officers,  which  these  slavery  leaders  studied 
as  carefully  as  they  did  the  Scriptures  for  divine  authority 
for  their  institution.  Few  people  in  general  paid  much 
attention  to  these,  but  there  was  never  a  line  missed  by  these 
careful  observers,  who  used  the  army  as  well  as  all  the 
powers  and  agencies  of  the  Government  for  their  benefit, 
and  who  permitted  the  story  of  sandy  desert  plains  and  alkali 
wastes  everywhere  in  the  West,  if  they  did  not  invent  them. 

The  admission  of  the  Territories  of  Xew  Mexico  and 

451 


452  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

Utah  without  slavery,  the  leaders  claimed,  was  a  surrender 
of  their  rights  under  the  extending  line  of  1820,  and  conse- 
quently the  act  for  their  organization,  one  of  the  compro- 
mise measures  of  1850,  was  in  effect  a  repealing  act,  because 
they  were  in  this  act  made  free  Territories,  and  this  ren- 
dered void  the  westward  Missouri  line  of  1830.  This  feature 
of  the  act  was  not  disclosed  in  the  debates,  nor  were  the 
Territorial  acts  mentioned  as  having  such  an  eifect,  until 
some  two  or  three  years  after  their  passage,  when,  as  will 
appear,  the  Democratic  party  under  its  pro-slavery  leaders, 
with  most  of  the  Whig  leaders  in  full  accord,  declared  it  to 
be  their  belief.  It  was  then  discovered  that  these  watchful 
leaders,  in  surrendering  territory  which  they  could  not  oc- 
cupy by  reason  of  the  natural  obstacles  mentioned,  found 
and  declared  it  a  plausible  reason  for  the  abrogation  of  the 
Missouri  line,  and  the  introduction  of  slavery  into  territory 
from  which  they  had  agreed  to  its  exclusion. 

When  they  had  brought  the  people  and  the  Government 
around  to  their  alternative  plan,  as  they  believed  they  had 
done,  it  was  then  discovered  that  Calhoun  and  his  followers 
had  been  long-headed  enough  in  1820  to  get  Missouri  in  as 
a  slave  State  in  the  location  that  would  serve  its  purpose 
best  for  extension  when  they  needed  it. 

President  Taylor  died  July,  1850.  In  the  December  fol- 
lowing, when  Congress  reassembled,  the  five  separate  acts 
considered  here  were  passed  and  became  part  of  our  history, 
l?iiown  as  the  Compromise  Measures  of  1850.  Thomas  Cor- 
win,  of  Ohio,  a  leading  ^Vhig  senator  from  that  State,  who 
was  an  able  and  distinguished  leader  in  the  party,  and 
Daniel  Webster  were  taken  into  Fillmore's  Cabinet.  Fill- 
more and  his  advisers,  together  with  Henry  Clay,  who  was 
rapidly  failing,  and  the  Democratic  pro-slavery  leaders,  all 
agreed  to  these  measures  as  a  full  and  satisfactory  settle- 
ment, a  final  one  on  the  question  that  had  disturbed  the 
Nation  in  some  form  or  other  from  its  foundation. 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  453 

It  would  be  absurd  enough  now  to  provoke  ridicule  to 
relate  how  the  older  party  leaders  of  the  period  were  so 
earnestly  impressed  with  the  belief  that  it  was  what  they 
held  it  to  be,  and  a  settlement  that  would  be  recognized 
as  the  most  feasible  and  practicable,  and  one  that  would 
be  observed  as  law  and  sound  policy,  that  they  denounced 
as  agitators  and  Abolition  disturbers,  and  even  as  disunion- 
ists,  all  who  questioned  it  as  the  settlement  which  they  so 
fully  asserted  as  final  on  this  great  dividing  issue.  This 
was  the  belief  of  the  parties  of  the  day  as  declared,  when 
the  Whig  party,  with  its  great  leaders,  was  dying  in  the 
service  of  slavery,  and  when  the  Democratic  party  was  divid- 
ing and  sundering  from  top  to  bottom  on  the  same  subject. 
It  was  the  time  when  the  party  most  trusted  by  the  slavery 
propagandists  would  live ;  and  as  they  needed  but  one  party, 
after  both  had  submitted  to  them,  the  one  not  selected 
would  necessarily  perish. 

These  compromise  measures  passed  the  Senate  by  thirty 
votes  against  twenty-five.  The  minority  was  not  organized, 
but  they  were  determined  and  stubborn  men.  Some  real 
leaders  on  the  side  of  freedom  had  reached  the  Senate,  who 
made  an  earnest  and  memorable  contest  against  slavery,  one 
that  proved  the  truth  of  the  belief  of  the  passing  leaders, 
that  the  day  of  the  last  compromise  with  slavery  had  passed, 
but  not  in  the  way  they  believed  or  expected.  Portentous 
changes  were  coming  in  the  Senate.  Calhoun  was  gone; 
Clay,  Webster,  Corwin,  and  Benton  were  retiring;  Seward, 
Chase,  and  Hale,  on  positive  anti-slavery  ground,  were  in; 
and  Sumner,  Ben  Wade,  and  Fessenden  were  soon  to  join 
them,  with  several  as  fully-determined  anti-slavery  men. 
The  pro-slavery  Whigs  were  retiring,  passing  away,  or  join- 
ing the  Democratic  party.  Then  it  was  that  Judge  Douglas 
and  Jefferson  Davis  began  their  long,  and  to  Douglas  mortal, 
combat  for  the  chief  leadership  of  the  Democratic  party. 

The  general  belief  prevailed,  as  the  most  designing  lead- 


454  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

ers  of  all  parties  desired,  except  the  unorganized  anti-slavery 
factions,  that  the  slavery  question  was  permanently  settled; 
but  no  one,  leader,  statesman,  or  citizen,  could  tell  how. 
When  probed  to  the  bottom,  it  seemed  to  be  a  settlement 
in  which  both  the  Whig  and  Democratic  parties  had  agreed 
to  condemn  everybody  indiscriminately  without  qualification 
who  were  opposed  to  any  one  of  their  compromise  measures, 
or  who  doubted  their  efficacy. 

An  example  of  the  diverging  views  of  the  time  was  told 
of  a  conversation  between  Benton,  who  was  retiring,  and 
Charles  Sumner,  who  was  then  in  1852  just  entering  the 
Senate,  on  their  first  acquaintance.  Benton  remarked:  "I 
have  heard  of  you,  sir,  of  your  ability  and  conspicuous  talent 
for  debate,  and  I  could  have  wished  for  your  earlier  appear- 
ance here,  before  all  the  great  questions  which  have  dis- 
turbed our  peace  so  many  years  were  settled.''  Sumner, 
who  was  about  as  haughty  as  Benton,  replied:  '"'Sir,  I  am 
indeed  surprised  to  hear  that  you  think  any  question  con- 
cerning so  great  an  evil  as  slavery  is  or  can  be  settled  before 
it  is  abolished  or  put  in  the  way  of  abolishment.  For  myself, 
I  shall  treat  and  consider  it  as  a  great  wrong  and  a  very 
much  unsettled  evil."  Benton,  as  he  was  walking  away,  said: 
"1  am  really  sorry  for  the  young  man;  he  has  talent  by  all 
we  see  and  hear  of  him,  and  if  all  our  differences  had  not 
been  settled  for  the  century,  a  man  like  him  might  hope  for 
distinction." 

This  was  the  prevailing  belief  of  about  all  except  the 
conscience-believing  anti-slavery  people,  who  were  usually 
quiet  and  discreet  in  the  expression  of  their  beliefs,  know- 
ing they  could  accomplish  so  little.  The  few  slavery  chief- 
tains knew  very  well  that  the  dispute  and  its  ending  was 
no  settlement,  and  the  high-sounding  compromises  were  no 
more  than  deceitful  palavers  to  distract  the  opposition  while 
they  were  taking  a  firmer  hold  and  a  deeper  clutch  on  free 
territory.     They  knew  that  the  anti-slavery  sentiment  was 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  455 

growing,  and  that  the  number  of  Free  Soil  advocates  was 
rapidly  increasing  every  day.  They  understood  the  actual 
situation  of  public  affairs,  because  of  their  facilities  for 
gaining  the  knowledge  and  their  unembarrassed  control  of 
the  Government  for  so  many  years.  Through  all  of  this 
they  were  preparing  themselves  for  any  emergency,  to  the 
point  of  being  ready  to  extend  slavery  into  any  Territory 
through  the  peaceful  operation  of  their  scheming  laws  and 
decisions,  or  by  the  use  of  all  the  forces  so  well  provided 
and  at  their  disposal. 

They  knew  that  there  would  be  determined  resistance 
and  fearless  opposition  when  the  nature  of  their  next  move- 
ments was  disclosed;  but  they  had  reached  such  control 
and  preparation  that  they  believed  they  were  able  to  over- 
come all  opposition,  and  to  extend  their  institution  wher- 
ever they  desired.  They  had,  under  the  leadership  of  Jef- 
ferson Davis,  opposed  the  admission  of  California,  but  in 
no  such  earnest  way  as  to  jeopardize  any  of  the  "Compro- 
mise Measures.'""  They  were  discreet  enough  not  to  dis- 
close their  intentions  as  to  what  their  next  movements 
would  be  until  after  the  near-approaching  Presidential  elec- 
tion of  1852,  when  the}'  would  time  their  movements  to 
meet  the  results. 

Claj',  then  in  the  closing  years  of  his  long  career,  held 
these  Measures  to  be  a  final  settlement  of  all  the  differ- 
ences between  the  sections,  and  admonished  his  friends 
and  followers  everj^where  to  give  them  hearty  and  cordial 
support.  Webster,  Benton,  and  many  of  the  most  capable 
men  of  the  da}',  severely  censured  all  who  disagreed  with 
them;  and  all  those  who  would  not  accept  them  as  final 
were  denounced  vehemently  as  agitators.  Abolitionists,  and 
disunionists. 

It  was  one  of  the  ironies  of  fate  that,  as  Clay  was  end- 
ing his  brilliant  life  with  these  opinions  and  advice  to  his 
followers,  Archibald  Dixon,  a  pro-slavery  Whig,  was  elected, 


456  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

and  succeeded  him  in  the  Senate.  He  had  no  scruples  in 
declaring,  as  soon  as  he  was  elected,  that  he  would  vote 
to  introduce  slavery  into  any  Territory  whenever  there  was 
opportunity,  which  he  as  faithfully  endeavored  to  carry 
out.  When  this  was  done  in  Kentucky,  and  Sumner  suc- 
ceeded Webster  from  Massachusetts,  the  sentimentalism 
of  these  great  leaders  had  gone  out  of  the  slavery  question 
forever. 

The  scales  had  fallen  from  the  eyes  of  the  voters  in 
both  States  when  Dixon  and  Sumner  confronted  each  other 
in  the  Senate.  They  were  not  in  any  mood  to  compro- 
mise, or  to  busy  themselves  in  any  way  about  continuing 
the  compromises  supposed  to  be  in  existence,  but  to  con- 
tend for  their  rights  as  they  and  their  people  understood 
them.  It  was  surely  a  relief  to  the  country  that  these 
Compromise  Measures  were  held  to  be  a  finality  and  the 
end  of  compromising  on  the  subject  by  both  sections. 

As  the  world  had  gone  and  will  go  with  men,  there  was 
always  a  certainty  that  a  conilict  between  slavery  and  free- 
dom was  inevitable.  As  this  had  been  in  the  minds  of  so 
many  capable  men  for  so  long,  it  was  merciful  to  make 
the  contention  as  soon  as  it  was  possible  for  the  Nation 
to  do  so.  The  fault  was,  and  will  ever  be  an  example  in 
similar  contests,  that  the  people  were  so  easily  deceived 
that  they  permitted  the  slave-power — the  alien,  and  al- 
ways the  enemy  of  free  Government — to  remain  in  power 
so  long  that  our  liberties  were  well-nigh  squandered.  When 
the  body  of  the  people  ascertained  our  danger,  when 
alarmed  at  its  continuing  power  and  encroachments,  we 
had  to  rise  and  shake  off  the  rising  monster  in  an  ocean 
of  blood  that  washed  out  the  sins  of  the  oppressors. 

Mr.  Clay  died  at  his  home  in  Kentucky,  June  29,  1852, 
at  the  ripe  age  of  seventy-five  years.  There  must  have 
been  a  providence  far  beyond  human  wisdom  that  made  a 
temporizer  and  compromiser  like  Clay  the  most  prominent 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  457 

leader,  with  his  unsurpassable  political  strategy,  for  almost 
half  a  century,  against  the  most  positive,  determined,  and 
uncompromising  friends  of  freedom  and  free  government 
on  the  earth.  The  Nation  was  to  be  builded.  Its  Continental 
stretch  was  to  be  provided  for.  The  African  was  to  be 
enslaved  and  kept  so  until  other  things  were  done  and 
the  Nation  had  gained  the  strength  to  stand  the  shock  of 
the  awful  conflict  for  his   freedom. 

But  as  he  labored  and  suffered  through  this  transforma- 
tion, he  was  to  see  a  better  civilization,  that  may  yet  in- 
crease and  spread  its  benign  influence  into  a  more  benighted 
condition  of  his  race  and  the  darkest  continent  in  exist- 
ence. No  man  like  Clay  has  lived  or  been  among  us  who 
could  have  kept  the  contending  sections  from  a  clash  and 
eruption,  or  a  blow  somewhere  that  would  have  brought  a 
settlement  or  a  conflict  at  arms  long  before  it  came.  He 
was  the  peace-keeper  of  the  Nation  in  its  boyhood  and 
adolescence.  He  did  not  lack  the  personal  courage  to 
fight;  and  if  the  slavery-contention  had  been  his  personal 
one,  he  would  have  fought  it  to  a  conclusion  at  any  time; 
but  he  did  fear  the  awful  consequences  of  the  war  that 
was  to  come  to  the  Nation,  and  could  fire  the  dreaded 
calamities  into  men's  minds  in  such  ardor  and  to  such 
heroic  purpose  that  the  most  relentless  men  on  either  side 
stood  transfixed  and  appalled. 

They  saw  this  wonderful  man,  and  paused  at  his  mag- 
ical power,  who  appeared  and  became  what  he  was  not 
naturally,  a  compromiser  for  fift}'^  years,  to  save  his  country 
from  destruction  by  its  contending  factions,  and  to  lose 
the  Presidency  three  or  four  times  in  his  trial  to  be  on  both 
sides.  He  stood  on  the  middle  ground  so  long  that  no 
party  could  have  elected  him  President;  and  still  he  was 
so  powerful  and  winning  in  his  greatness  of  soul  and  soar- 
ing intellect  that  no  party  could  antagonize  the  living  Clay, 
and  bring  on  the  conflict  of  arms  until  he  passed  away. 


458  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

Shortly  after  his  death,  Mr.  Lincoln  delivered  an  ora- 
tion on  his  life  and  character,  which  was,  of  course,  a 
brilliant  and  grandly  expressive  discourse,  full  of  the  life 
and  soul  of  the  great  leader.  It  was  a  memorable  occasion, 
and  an  address  that  passed  all  limits  of  description,  with 
Lincoln  at  his  best,  paying  his  loving  tribute  to  the  memory 
of  his  friend  and  leader,  one  so  sincerely  and  tenderly  held 
in  mind,  that  it  took  all  his  masterful  powers,  and  was 
so  full  of  generous-hearted  sympathy  for  the  departed 
statesman  that  he  and  his  audience,  unused  to  such 
strength,  power,  and  tenderness,  wept  like  little  children. 

It  should  be  mentioned  as  evidence  of  the  prevailing 
belief  of  the  time  that,  as  strong  an  advocate  of  freedom 
as  Mr.  Lincoln  was  known  to  be,  he  believed  as  Clay  had 
taught,  that  these  Compromise  Measures  of  1850  had  set- 
tled the  contending  parties  down  to  the  belief,  however 
objectionable  it  might  be  to  either  section,  yet  so  binding 
by  reasons  of  the  general  and  long-continued  discussions 
and  the  no  less  professed  general  acceptance  of  the  different 
measures  agreed  upon,  the  Nation  would  be  compelled  to 
abide  by  these  for  a  long  period  of  years  at  least.  In 
addition  to  this,  it  was  the  time  above  all  others  when 
he  declared  himself  "out  of  politics  if  I  can  do  as  I 
please." 

He  had  become  devoted  to  the  thought  and  study  that 
comes  to  busy  and  hurried  men,  w^hen  he  was  pushing  his 
reasonings  into  the  higher  realms  of  thought  and  philoso- 
phy. This  was  shown  in  his  satisfaction  when,  after  a  two- 
days'  search  all  over  Bloomington,  the  MTiter  found  him  a 
well-worn  copy  of  Bacon's  Essays,  when  he  observed,  "I 
have  served  the  public,  and  have  been  honored  as  much  as 
any  citizen  should  expect,  and  in  the  future  I  intend  to 
be  governed  by  the  best  advice  I  have  ever  had,  and  take 
up,  as  I  can,  for  reading  and  study  the  best  and  most  con- 
cise authors  in  literature  and  reasoning." 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  459 

To  those  who  were  independent  enough,  and  had  in- 
vestigated the  slavery  system  and  its  relations  to  our  Gov- 
ernment, the  attitude  of  parties  and  their  leaders,  there  was 
no  end  to  surprise,  astonishment,  and  disappointment.  The 
privilege  of  free  speech  and  free  discussion  was  eliminated 
from  many  communities,  the  opposition  rising  in  severity 
from  ridicule,  in  most  of  them,  to  mobs,  riots,  and  murder, 
like  that  against  Lovejoy  at  Alton,  Illinois,  and  St.  Louis, 
who  had  three  printing  presses  thrown  into  the  river,  and 
himself  murdered  in  1837,  without  the  arrest  of  any  one 
of  the  culprits. 

Something  of  the  apathy  and  indifference  to  the  enormi- 
ties and  iniquities  of  the  system  prevailing  can  be  better 
understood  when  such  villainy  and  murder  were  condoned 
and  overlooked  in  a  free  State;  when,  too,  Garrison  and 
Phillips  were  mobbed  and  their  meetings  were  dispersed 
in  the  Puritan  city  of  Boston.  It  was  so  unpopular  to  be 
known  as  an  Abolitionist  that  all  timid  people  dreaded 
contention  on  the  subject  so  much  as  to  shrink  from  pro- 
tecting those  who  had  the  courage  to  denounce  such  crimi- 
nal outrage  and  wrong.  This  widespread  dread  and  sup- 
pression of  free  speech  was  the  desire — and  a  very  distinct 
one — of  the  slave-leaders,  who  had  succeeded  so  far  in  the 
Nation  from  1844  to  1853-54  that  about  every  political 
leader  with  a  respectable  following  was  teaching  and  ad- 
vising submission  to  the  "settled  condition  of  the  slavery 
question."  The  man  who  had  the  grit  and  determination 
to  strip  off  the  coverings  from  the  horrid  skeleton  did  well 
to  be  no  more  than  ridiculed,  howled  down,  or  laughed  at, 
or,  at  the  very  best,  pitied  by  those  who  were  too  timid 
to  interfere  in  the  face  of  a  mob,  to  help  defend  the  most 
sacred  rights  of  an  American  citizen. 

Another  startling  feature  of  the  subject  was  the  negli- 
gence and  political  cowardice  of  our  ablest  leaders  in  the 
free  and  border  States,  like   Webster,   Clay,  Benton,  and 


460  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

Douglas.  Without  consideration  of  what  might  be  the 
agreements  in  compromises,  men  were  entitled  to  their  liber- 
ties and  the  free  expression  of  their  opinions  and  the  pro- 
tection of  law  in  doing  so.  These  leaders  should  have 
known  that,  however  anxious  they  were  for  an  amicable 
adjustment,  they  could  not  prevent  a  sharp  contention, 
perhaps  a  collision,  in  the  Territories.  It  was  surprising, 
indeed,  that  the  experienced  statesmen  named,  who  cer- 
tainly possessed  the  wisdom  and  learning  of  their  day  in 
high  degree,  ever  thought  for  a  moment  that  they  had  set- 
tled the  differences  between  the  free  and  slave  States. 

It  was  strange  that  they  imagined  they,  or  others,  could 
settle  a  sharply  and  well  defined  contention  between  ex- 
cited factions  by  any  sort  of  indecisive  action,  such  as  was 
claimed  by  these  compromises.  At  their  best  they  only 
shifted  the  slavery  issue  against  freedom  from  Congress 
to  the  new  Territories.  Strange  and  more  unaccountable* 
it  was  that  they,  skilled  in  learning  and  the  law,  believers 
in  freedom,  and  detesting  slavery,  arrogated  to  themselves 
and  delegated  to  others  the  authority  to  enslave  any  man, 
or  return  him  into  slavery. 

It  was  a  presumptuous  one,  indeed,  and  no  more  than 
an  assumption  of  authority  which  God  never  gave  to  man, 
to  enslave  his  fellow-man.  This  truth  was  emphatically 
asserted  in  our  Declaration  of  Independence  as  funda- 
mental, and  it  was  as  binding  as  the  Constitution,  when 
it  declared  that  "God  created  all  men  free,  and  endowed 
them  with  certain  inalienable  rights,  among  which  are  life, 
liberty,  and  the  pursuit  of  happiness."  There  is  nothing 
like  slavery  or  remanding  slave-laws  in  this,  and  it  is  one 
of  the  contrarieties  of  men  and  proof  of  the  slow,  emerging 
progress  of  civilization  that  people  by  the  hundreds  of 
thousands,  believing  themselves  to  be  Christians,  were  di- 
rectly or  indirectly  sustaining  the  worst  form  of  slavery 
that  had  ever  been  known. 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  461 

It  is  a  wonder  that  such  men  as  Clay,  Webster,  Benton, 
and  Douglas  were  blinded  and  prejudiced,  as  they  came  to 
be,  and  that  Lincoln  did  not  rise  in  the  majesty  of  his  un- 
equaled  powers  against  slavery  long  before  he  did.  In 
his  case,  however,  it  was  a  delay  of  only  a  few  years.  The 
times  were  not  ready.  God's  adjustment  of  law  and  the 
rights  of  men  was  coming  in  one  of  his  terrible  judgments, 
when  the  footprints  of  his  heroes  would  cover  four  hundred 
years  of  the  struggle  for  human  liberty. 

In  this  political  calm,  with  the  slavery  question  de- 
clared to  be  settled,  as  it  was  by  both  leading  parties,  the 
Democratic  party  met  in  Baltimore,  June  1,  1852.  The 
three  candidates  for  President  were  Douglas,  Buchanan, 
and  Pierce.  Douglas  was  only  thirty-nine  years  of  age, 
but  was  even  then  the  strongest  leader  in  his  party. 
Buchanan  was  about  sixty.  He  had  a  lifetime's  experi- 
ence behind  him  in  high  political  positions.  Franklin 
Pierce  was  in  his  prime,  at  about  fifty  years  of  age.  He 
had  been  a  representative  in  Congress  from  his  State  of 
New  Hampshire.  He  had  received  distinguished  favors 
from  Polk's  Administration,  which  gave  him  his  principal 
notoriety  as  a  brigadier-general  in  the  Mexican  War.  He 
was  a  cultivated,  polite  gentleman,  with  enough  attention 
to  his  personal  appearance  and  dress  to  live  up  to  his  par- 
ticular attitude  and  military  reputation.  He  had  a  desire 
to  serve  in  the  only  line  where  distinction  was  open  to 
such  men,  which  then  was  to  serve  the  slavery-leaders  with 
all  the  zeal  of  a  new  convert. 

He  had  been  what  was  called  one  of  the  "political  briga- 
diers" under  Scott,  who  had  no  toleration  for  such  men. 
However,  it  was  said  that  he  had  shown  conspicuous  cour- 
age and  gallantry  on  the  field,  where  he  was  a  fine-appear- 
ing, faultlessly-dressed,  and  a  well  fixed-up  soldier,  with 
manners  and  bearing  and  influence,  all  of  which,  with  his 
easy-bending  ideas  on  slavery,  made  him  a  formidable  can- 


462  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

didate,  the  one  whom  the  Southern  leaders  selected  and 
nominated.  William  A.  Graham,  an  able  Southern  senator, 
from  North  Carolina,  was  named  on  the  ticket  with  Pierce 
for  Vice-President. 

The  Whig  Convention  met  in  Baltimore  on  the  16th  of 
June.  The  candidates  were  Fillmore,  who  very  much  de- 
sired the  nomination,  and  was  using  all  the  patronage  of 
his  Administration  to  effect  it.  Daniel  Webster,  who  was 
then  Secretary  of  State,  was  a  candidate,  and,  of  all  the 
Whig  leaders,  was  the  best  entitled  to  the  nomination,  if 
long  party  service,  devotion  to,  and  unequaled  achievement 
for,  his  country  in  maintaining  the  strength  of  its  funda- 
mental law,  and  commanding  ability,  could  so  entitle  any 
man.  Clay  was  at  home,  in  his  last  days,  where  he  died  on  the 
29th  of  June,  only  a  few  days  after  the  Convention  adjourned. 
General  Scott,  who  was  then  an  old  man,  in  the  infiinnity 
of  age,  was  an  incidental  candidate,  but  without  the  least 
anxiety  on  his  part.  He  had  been  ambitious,  and  felt  that 
he  deserved  the  Whig  nomination  in  1848,  when  Taylor 
was  nominated  over  as  popular  candidates  as  Clay  and  Scott. 
The  old  general  had  devoted  the  most  of  his  long  life  to 
military  and  very  little  to  other  public  affairs.  He  had 
been  the  true  type  of  an  American  soldier,  and  as  such 
had  been  the  hero  and  leader  in  two  of  our  principal  wars, 
besides  his  campaigning  against  the  Indians.  He  was  some- 
what vain,  and  he  felt  that  he  had  the  right  to  be;  for  he 
had  won  endless  fame  and  unparalleled  victories  with 
American  soldiers  who  had  grown  up  under  his  watchful 
care  and  the  instruction  of  a  lifetime,  until  our  small  armies 
had  won  victory  on  every  field  on  which  they  fought;  and 
he  delighted  in  being  considered  the  military  successor  of 
Washington. 

Fillmore's  followers  did  not  have  enough  votes  to  nomi- 
nate him;  but,  being  the  craftsman,  and  managing  the 
crew  that  was  piloting  the  ship  of  State,  his  crew  could  be 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  463 

held  in  tow,  and  defeat  any  other  candidate  as  they  wished. 
Fillmore  saw  his  inevitable  defeat,  and,  being  too  narrow- 
minded  to  be  a  statesman,  and  too  ungenerous  to  remem- 
ber the  friend  who  had  given  his  Administration  the  only 
repute  it  ever  had,  he  turned,  in  his  ingratitude,  defeated 
Webster,  and  with  his  easily-manipulated  following  nomi- 
nated General  Scott,  who  had  very  little  desire  for  the  nomi- 
nation. Webster  may  not  have  deserved  the  nomination  on 
the  basis  of  merit  that  a  President  should  be  true  to  his 
party  and  the  people  who  elect  and  sustain  him.  Perhaps 
he  was  not;  but,  as  related  to  Franklin  Pierce,  who  was 
nominated  and  elected,  it  was  as  if  you  had  tried  to  draw 
your  lines  between  intellectual  majesty  of  the  highest  order 
and  glittering  buttons,  broadcloth,  curled  hair,  lace,  and 
feathers.  The  truth  is,  that  Webster  was  broken  two  years 
before  the  Convention.  He  had  no  State,  like  Kentucky  or 
Missouri,  as  Clay  and  Benton  had,  even  partially  to  sustain 
him.  The  slave  communities  demanded  even  better  serv- 
ice than  Clay  or  Benton  had  ever  given  them  in  behalf  of 
slavery,  when  their  service  had  been  given  to  their  detri- 
ment and  loss  of  availability  for  office,  and,  worse,  by  the 
sacrifice  of  the  great  principles  that  were  their  strongest 
elements. 

In  Webster's  downfall  the  relations  were  reversed.  His 
State  of  Massachusetts  had  not  deserted  him  until  this 
breaking-down  period  in  the  career  of  America's  greatest 
forensic  orator  and  philosopher  of  laws  and  Constitutions. 
He  had  the  strongest  and  most  faithful  body  of  friends  in 
all  New  England  that  ever  followed  any  leader  on  this 
Continent,  and  they  remained  so  until  they  could  follow 
him  no  further,  because  he  faltered  and  fell  in  his  ambi- 
tion to  be  President.  In  1850  he  was  weakening,  and  it 
was  evident  that  his  great  powers  were  declining.  This 
may  have  been  the  true  cause  of  his  political  submission  to 
a  system  so  universally  obnoxious  to  his  friends  that  they 


464  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

abandoned  him  in  pity  and  disappointment.  However,  his 
defeat  by  Fillmore  and  his  office-holding  recruits  was  so 
cruel  that,  coupled  with  the  heartless  surrender  of  the 
Whig  party  to  slavery,  it  wrought  out  the  swiftest  oblitera- 
tion ever  inflicted  on  any  political  organization  that  had 
elected  a  President. 

John  P.  Hale,  a  senator  from  ISTew  Hampshire,  and 
George  W.  Julian,  of  Indiana,  were  nominated  by  the  Free 
Soil  party  at  Pittsburg,  August  11,  1853. 

The  Democratic  party  declared  its  belief  in  the  Virginia 
State-rights  Resolutions  of  1798  and  fidelity  to  the  Compro- 
mise Measures  of  1850,  and  profusely  and  wordfully  de- 
nounced all  agitation  of  the  slavery  question  as  dangerous. 
The  Whig  party  accepted  the  compromises  as  final,  promis- 
ing submission,  but  resolving  earnestly  for  a  system  of  in- 
ternal improvements.  The  Free  Soilers  declared  their  hos- 
tility to  slavery  in  general,  and  especially  protested  against 
its  extension  into  any  of  the  Territories.  They  adjourned, 
with  the  knowledge  that  theirs  was  the  only  party  Conven- 
tion of  the  year  whose  members  believed  in  and  faithfully 
supported  their  declaration  of  principles. 

The  campaign  was  a  dull,  spiritless  one,  and  resulted 
in  the  election  of  Pierce  and  the  complete  triumph  of  the 
compromising  pro-slavery  policy.  There  were  some  strange 
and  fantastic  endings  of  the  almost  unanimous  settlings 
of  that  year,  which  were  all  overturned  so  soon  afterwards, 
and  they  left  little  doubt  of  the  truth  that  nothing  had 
been  so  well  and  definitely  settled  as  the  compact  consoli- 
dation of  all  the  slave  States  in  the  interest  of  slavery  and 
its  extension. 

General  Scott,  although  a  slaveholder,  and  brought  up 
in  Virginia,  with  slavery  in  its  more  humane  forms  all 
about  him,  would  have  seemed  to  be  the  logical  candidate 
of  the  pro-slavery  interests.  But  their  leaders  knew  the 
old  hero  and  his  beliefs  on  the  subject  of  slavery,  and  how 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  465 

he  would  stand  on  the  question  of  secession,  very  much  bet- 
ter than  the  general  public;  and  for  the  best  of  reasons  they 
did  not  trust  him.  There  was  too  much  sturdy  loyalty  to 
liis  country  and  genuine  patriotism  and  pride  of  American 
achievement  in  the  make-up  of  the  old  chieftain  to  suit 
the  designs  and  purposes  of  the  daring  and  venturesome 
Southern  leaders;  and  no  man  in  the  country  knew  them 
better  than  he  did. 

Pierce  was  as  wax  in  their  fingers,  and,  with  both  par- 
ties being  in  their  favor,  they  had  little,  if  any,  difficulty 
in  electing  him.  One  of  the  strangest  features  of  the  cam- 
paign was,  not  that  Seward,  Weed,  and  Greeley  supported 
Scott,  but  that  they  supported  the  compromising,  pro-slavery 
platform  on  which  Scott  made  what  canvass  was  made  for 
the  Whig  party.  Horace  Greeley,  who  had  established  and 
won  considerable  success,  was  an  ardent  supporter  of  Scott. 
These  three,  the  most  prominent  anti-slavery  leaders  left  in 
the  old  Whig  party,  surprised  a  great  many  believers  in  the 
anti-slavery  cause  in  their  support  of  Scott,  though  he  was 
known  as  only  a  moderate  upholder  of  the  slave-system. 
They  averred  that  they  supported  Scott  because  they  had 
abiding  faith  in  the  old  hero's  higher  qualities,  that  placed 
him  above  platforms  and  resolutions. 

They  could  not  have  accomplished  much  if  they  had 
acted  differently;  but  their  course  gives  the  strongest  proof 
of  the  subjugation  of  the  Xorth  to  the  foul  compromises 
of  the  pro-slavery  leaders.  The  result  of  the  election  was 
that,  having  selected  the  Democratic  party  to  carry  out 
the  plans  of  the  propaganda,  the  Whig  party  not  being 
needed,  and  doing  no  more  than  carry  on  a  political  mas- 
querade, it  went  to  pieces;  and  its  members  entered  other 
organizations,  to  contend  for  the  ISTation  or  against  it,  as 
their  inclinations  led  them. 

Pierce  and  King  received  254  electoral  votes  and 
1,601,474  popular  votes;  Scott  and  Graham  received  1,386,- 
30 


466  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

578  popular  votes;  Hale  and  Julian  received  no  electoral 
votes  and  156,149  popular  votes. 

The  country  was  in  an  era  of  apparent  peace  and  pros- 
perity. Gold  and  silver  in  great  quantities,  and  other  valu- 
able metals,  had  been  discovered,  and  were  added  to  the 
already  existing  attractions  of  the  great,  unexplored  West. 
These,  with  the  adventuresome  spirit  of  our  people,  were 
enticing  hundreds  of  thousands  to  the  West  and  to  the 
boundless  Pacific  region,  with  its  ''sun-setting  splendors." 

The  real  forces,  the  most  powerful  ones  for  the  agita- 
tion of  the  vexed  question,  that  could  neither  bo  compro- 
mised with  nor  controlled,  were  those  moving  multitudes, 
with  all  the  implements  of  freedom,  who  would  not  allow 
slavery  to  go  with  them  into  any  of  the  new  Territories. 
This  strong,  disturbing  element  against  the  peaceful  ex- 
tension of  slavery  was  altogether  uncalculated  and  unpro- 
vided for.  The  pro-slavery  leaders,  seeing  its  alarming  and 
rapid  progress,  were  suddenly  aroused.  The  movement  was 
a  bad  one  for  them,  and  the  slave-propaganda  called  an 
assemblage  of  their -highest  council  to  act  upon  it  at  once. 
If  the  South  had  been  a  free  people,  with  privilege  and 
power  to  enforce  their  beliefs,  this  would  have  been  a 
gathering  of  leaders  and  men  from  the  Chesapeake  to  the 
Eio  Grande.  It  did  not  become  a  popular  movement  of 
the  people  because  their  leaders  had  no  desire  that  it  should. 
The  South  was  an  aristocracy,  and  no  such  Government  ever 
held  its  people  to  better  submission  or  more  complete  obe- 
dience and  control  under  a  few  men  and  one  dictator  than 
this  same  pro-slavery  power.  The  management  was  a  pe- 
culiar one.  Until  1861  it  had  no  declared  officers  and  no 
public  records.  Its  leaders  were  known  only  by  their  acts 
in  their  absolute  control  of  all  public  affairs  in  their  section. 

The  local  leaders  were  those  who  could  control  parties 
in  the  slave  States.  At  Washington  there  was  one  dictator 
and  a  few  prominent  leaders  whom  he  called  into  his  coun- 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  467 

cil.  These  latter  held  that  authority,  and  lived  at  the  Na- 
tional Capital  during  life,  or  as  long  as  they  held  offices  for 
their  States.  These — the  dictator  and  a  few  leaders — mas- 
tered the  slave  States,  framed  their  policies,  and  planned 
their  contingent  conspiracy  several  years  ahead.  When  it 
became  necessary  to  carry  out  their  designs,  these  few — 
not  more  than  a  half  dozen  in  chief  council — retired  to 
Montgomery  early  in  1861,  with  no  change  from  the  propa- 
ganda at  Washington,  except  that,  when  it  was  transferred, 
it  became  retitled  "The  Confederate  States."  In  this  move- 
ment they  had  no  increased  prerogatives,  save  what  the 
leaders  were  assuming  in  projecting  war  against  our  coun- 
try by  its  servants  and  sworn  defenders. 

With  the  kind  of  management  which  we  have  mentioned, 
the  plan  for  the  change  in  the  slavery  movement  into  the 
Territories  was  made  under  the  absolute  control  of  Calhoun 
in  his  last  days,  and  Jefferson  Davis,  as  successor  and  dic- 
tator, with  Stephens,  Benjamin,  and  Breckinridge,  and  the 
very  few  whom  they  called  into  their  council,  agreeing,  as 
all  of  them  had  to  do,  to  the  unquestioned  authority  of 
Davis.  They  made  every  preparation  for  the  coming  terri- 
torial plan  of  operations,  but  directing  and  controlling  the 
introduction  of  this  remarkable  change  so  as  to  make  it 
appear  to  be  the  voluntary  act  of  provident  leaders  and 
parties,  in  which  they  assumed  that  they  exercised  no  un- 
usual control. 

In  the  changed  relations  of  slavery  to  the  progress  and 
development  of  our  Western  Territories,  these  leaders  deter- 
mined upon  a  repeal  or  utter  disregard  of  the  Missouri 
Compromise,  which,  they  claimed,  was  set  aside  and  re- 
versed by  the  compromises  of  1850.  This  was  a  plausible 
claim  to  all  who  would  agree  that  any  right  existed  any- 
where under  our  National  laws  to  take  or  establish  slavery 
in  any  forming  or  free  Territory.  The  slave-leaders 
claimed  that  these  acts  of  1850  conceded  the  right  to  slave- 


468  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

holders  to  take  their  slaves,  like  any  other  property,  into 
any  Territory  of  the  United  States,  in  proof  of  which  Cali- 
fornia had  been  admitted  as  a  free  State,  and  the  Terri- 
tories of  New  Mexico  and  Utah  had  been  organized,  the 
former  south  and  the  latter  north  of  the  line  made  running 
westward  by  the  Missouri  Compromise  of  1820,  and  that 
the  territory  out  of  which  California  was  made  was  about 
equally  divided  by  the  line.  They  claimed  that  in  all  of 
these  the  principle  had  been  recognized  that  if  the  inhabit- 
ants so  desired  and  determined,  they  could  introduce  slav- 
ery, which  was  protected  everywhere  under  the  Constitution 
and  directly  affirmed  in  their  drastic  Fugitive-slave  Law, 
This  was  a  plausible  and  apparently  reasonable  claim,  not 
because  of  the  slave-rendition  law,  or  any  or  all  of  the  acts 
of  1850,  which  were  all  favorable  to  slavery,  but  because 
of  the  long  course  of  toleration  and  concession  so  effectually 
confirmed  and  agreed  to  by  these  compromise  settlements. 

The  slaveholders'  contention  was  so  fair  and  plausible 
on  its  face  that,  if  no  great  moral  issue  had  been  involved, 
their  asserted  right  would  have  been  generally  recognized. 
However,  as  it  was,  it  marked  a  complete  revolution  in  party 
and  political  beliefs.  The  Whig  and  Democratic  parties, 
as  such,  could  not  contend  against  the  changed  Southern 
policy  of  slavery  expansion;  for  they  had  tacitly,  if  not 
positively,  agreed  to  these  slavery-extending  settlements. 
The  slaveholding  people  held  the  further  advantage  that,  in 
the  long  struggle,  with  the  well-known  weaknesses  and  am- 
bitions of  great  men,  and  those  of  a  great  many  small  ones, 
the  South  and  its  "^domestic  institutions"  had  made  thou- 
sands of  converts  so  successfully  to  1850  that  they  had 
proselyted  all  the  leaders  of  consequence  in  the  old  par- 
ties— all,  indeed,  whom  they  had  not  unhorsed  and  excom- 
municated, as  they  had  done  the  greater  ones:  Van  Buren, 
Cass,  and  Benton. 

President  Pierce's   Cabinet  was  a  piece  of  intriguing 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  469 

handiwork  in  crafty  skill  and  ability  that  fully  demonstrated 
who  Jefferson  Davis  was  without  further  explanation  to 
those  who  understood  what  was  to  be  the  changed  conduct 
of  the  propaganda  under  Calhoun's  successor.  It  was  a 
soldier's  policy  in  part;  for  Davis  held  to  that  largely  on 
account  of  the  rigid  discipline  and  easy  detail  of  carrying 
out  his  plans  and  purposes.  He  had  been  a  soldier  most  of 
his  life,  and  believed  in  a  political  policy  that  expected 
nothing  less  than  obedience  from  any  man  in  any  political 
position;  and  this  remained,  throughout  his  life,  his  gen- 
eral plan  and  policy  of  civil  administration. 

The  easy  manner  and  fine  address,  the  courtly  demeanor 
and  plausible  ways  of  the  Southern  gentleman,  such  as  Cal- 
houn had  been,  was  changed  and  supplanted  by  the  prompt 
and  almost  abrupt  style  and  the  positive  ways  of  the  new 
leader,  who  decided  or  delayed  action  without  discussion, 
certainly  so  whenever  it  pleased  him.  He  could  be  re- 
served and  wait  and  control  himself,  but  not  with  the  ease 
or  suavity  of  the  kingly  South  Carolinian ;  but  when  he  did 
so,  he  did  it  under  stress  of  mind  that  bore  unconcealed 
evidence  of  his  forced  restraint.  The  South  had  returned 
to  complete  power,  and  the  Pierce  Administration,  organized 
under  Davis,  avowed  it  without  apology. 

Governor  William  L.  Marcy,  of  New  York,  who  was  the 
strongest  and  most  capable  man  in  it  from  the  free  States, 
was  Secretary  of  State,  in  which  his  relation  to  slavery  was 
general  only.  He  was  a  man  of  learning  and  distinction  be- 
fore he  held  office;  and  his  long  experience  in  public  affairs 
made  him  one  of  the  ablest  statesmen  of  his  day. 

Jefferson  Davis  was  the  most  important  member,  and 
so  much  so  that  the  Administration  was  under  his  control. 
He  was  personally  Secretary  of  War,  the  place  of  all  oth- 
ers in  which  he  could  manage,  supervise,  and  contrive  for 
the  South  in  the  new  adventure  of  forcing  slavery  into 
the   Territories.      With   his   military   experience,   his   well- 


470  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

earned  name  of  a  daring  and  courageous  soldier,  and  his 
personal  acquaintance  with  almost  every  officer  in  the  little 
army,  he  was  in  position  where  he  was  able  to  render  his 
section  more  useful  service  than  any  other  man  of  his  time — 
a  fact  which  will  develop  in  due  process. 

Caleb  Gushing,  of  Massachusetts,  was  made  the  Attorney- 
General.  He  was  a  learned  man — one  who  came  as  near 
being  a  standard  authority  on  laws,  customs,  rules,  and 
regulations  as  any  man  who  ever  sauntered  up  and  down 
the  Capital,  or  became  a  standard  authority  at  Washington. 
He  was  a  close  student,  a  lawyer  of  cunning  and  capacity. 
He  was  easy,  facile,  and  malleable  to  almost  every  form 
of  belief,  and  so  adroit  as  to  be  seldom  found  in  error. 
At  the  time  he  was  the  only  New  England  lawyer  of  any 
prominence  whatever  who  could  be  induced  to  interpret 
and  enforce  the  odious  slave-catchers'  law.  He  had,  too, 
the  "cheek  and  the  jaw"  that  Yankeedom  abhorred  about 
as  much  as  the  capacity  to  write  a  pro-slavery  opinion  in 
the  shadow  of  Faneuil  Hall.  He  could  and  did,  as  he  be- 
lieved it  was  his  duty  as  the  law-interpreter  of  the  Jef- 
ferson Davis  and  Pierce  Administration,  write  out  an  elabo- 
rate opinion  establishing  the  Constitutionality  of  the  Fugi- 
tive-slave Law  of  1850.  At  the  same  time  he  sustained 
the  policy  of  the  Virginia  State-rights'  Eesolutions,  which, 
by  adoption,  was  a  part  of  the  Democratic  creed.  This  was 
a  thing  which  no  other  man  ever  attempted,  the  harmoniz- 
ing of  irreconcilable  principles. 

These  resolutions  declared  the  right  of  any  State,  on 
its  own  election,  to  secede  from  the  Union.  This  was  ab- 
surd enough  if  the  country  was  to  grow  to  strong  and  inde- 
pendent nationality.  Still,  obnoxious  and  objectionable 
as  it  was  and  seems  now,  if  the  slavery  hierarchy  that  Cush- 
ing  served  so  zealously,  in  its  turn,  had  prevailed,  then 
New  England  would  have  been  grateful  to  Cushing  and  his 
pro-slavery   Democracy  for   the   ready   means   afforded   to 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  471 

secede  from  the  liberty-destroyed  kingdom  which  they  were 
endeavoring  to  make  out  of  the  United  States. 

Gushing  became  famous,  and  served  in  and  against 
every  party  of  his  time.  He  gained  more  celebrity  as  a 
man  who  could  cover  up  his  real  purpose  in  some  plausible, 
unobjectionable  form  than  "the  highest-priced  lobby  law- 
yers ever  could."  He  came  near  becoming  eminent,  or,  at 
least,  reaching  eminent  office — the  chief-justiceship — by  his 
facility,  wonderful  store  of  knowledge,  and  plausibility  that 
seemed  to  have  no  end;  but  the  Senate,  on  examination, 
found  the  smut  of  the  Davis-Pierce  Administration  upon 
him,  and  asked  President  Grant  to  withdraw  his  nomination, 
without  publication  of  the  evidence,  which  he  did. 

He  served  Davis  so  faithfully  that  he  remained  his  friend 
until  he  went  into  insurrection.  Some  thought  he  did  so 
afterwards.  He  served  the  pro-slavery  party  until  it  had 
neither  office  nor  favor  to  give  him,  when,  like  most  of  the 
lonely  New  England  Democrats,  he  joined  the  Eepublicans; 
from  which  time  he  served  the  anti-slavery  party  with  as 
much  zeal  and  efficiency  as  he  had  served  the  others.  What- 
ever might  be  said,  this  was  often  done  to  good  purpose; 
for  with  his  immense  store  of  knowledge  and  experience, 
which  was  more  than  most  people  gave  him  credit  for, 
there  were  times  when  his  services  were  of  great  value. 
Poor  Gushing,  who  was  pitied  by  many,  had  the  learning, 
knowledge,  and  qualifications  to  have  been  a  great  man  and 
eminent  in  his  day,  but  he  was  without  courage  and  integ- 
rity of  purpose.  He  was  not  a  bad  man,  for  at  the  bottom 
he  loved  his  country.  He  was  a  highly-talented  man,  whose 
learning  did  not  bring  him  wisdom,  rather  craft  and  cun- 
ning, which  in  the  end  brought  nothing  but  lost  hopes  and 
disappointment.  After  the  overthrow  and  flight  of  the  pro- 
slavery  leaders  from  Washington,  the  courage  that  came  of 
reputable  position  and  standing  left  him,  and  he  finally 
settled  down  in  his  niche  as  "The  Prince  of  the  Lobby." 


472  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

With  everything  at  hand  and  all  the  powers  of  the 
Government  under  control,  the  executive,  the  legislative, 
and  the  judicial,  from  Congress  and  the  Supreme  Court 
down  to  the  attorneys  and  marshals  in  the  Territories,  the 
propaganda  had  full  and  complete  control  under  the  name 
of  Democracy.  They  seemed  to  have  the  slavery-stricken 
Eepublic  bound  hand  and  foot,  with  no  human  light  or  in- 
formation that  promised  relief  to  the  oppressed  ISTation 
and  people.  President  Pierce  was  inaugurated  March,  1853, 
when  he  said  in  part:  "The  policy  of  my  Administration  will 
not  be  governed  by  any  timid  forebodings  of  evil  from  ex- 
pansion. Indeed,  it  is  not  to  be  disguised  that  our  attitude 
as  a  Nation  and  our  position  on  the  globe  render  the  ac- 
quisition of  certain  possessions  not  within  our  jurisdiction 
eminently  important  for  our  protection,  if  not  for  the  pres- 
ervation of  the  rights  of  commerce  and  the  peace  of  the 
world." 

As  President  Polk  had  done  so  much  in  the  way  of  ex- 
pansion, it  was  Pierce's  ambition,  as  it  has  been  that  of 
several  other  Presidents,  to  do  something  of  the  kind  in  his 
day.  It  was  his  to  make  a  movement  to  get  Cuba,  which 
was  generally  considered  by  the  pro-slavery  authorities  a 
desirable  acquisition,  by  purchase  or  even  by  a  little  war 
and  a  big  "Peace  Commission."  The  whole  of  his  term  was 
spent  in  designs  and  plans  and  well-drawn-out  negotiations 
in  quest  of  obtaining  the  island.  It  was  Davis's  plan  of 
power  and  empire  that  would  have  eventually  made  the 
West  Indies  a  part  of  the  obliterated  free  Republic.  It  was 
defeated  by  never  being  authorized  by  Congress,  and  the 
pro-slavery  party  had  to  wait  because  no  party  in  those  days 
recognized  the  competence  of  any  authority  except  Con- 
gress. 

Pierce  in  his  message  continued,  "Regarding  slavery,  it 
was  and  is  recognized  by  the  Constitution;"  and  again:  "I 
will  enforce  the  compromise  measures  of  1850.    I  fervently 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  473 

trust  that  the  question  is  at  rest,  and  that  no  sectional, 
ambitious,  or  fanatical  excitement  may  again  threaten  the 
durability  of  our  institutions  or  obscure  the  light  of  our 
prosperity."  This  was  the  authentic  and  definite  declaration 
of  the  Davis  regime,  that  all  things  were  ready,  and  slavery 
would  soon  be  introduced  into  the  Territories  west  of  the 
Missouri  Eiver.  There  was  no  party  then  in  existence  in 
our  country  that  could  contend  with  or  against  slavery. 
The  political  scheming  of  more  than  half  a  century  had 
made  them  all  servants  of  the  degrading  system  in  some 
degree  or  other. 

Soon  after  the  discovery  of  gold  in  California  in  1849, 
at  least  as  early  as  1850,  there  was  pressing  need  for  the 
organization  of  the  Territories  of  Kansas  and  Nebraska, 
Protection  was  needed  for  the  better  exploration  of  the 
vast  plains  and  majestic  mountain  ranges  that  only  a  few 
white  men  had  ever  seen.  The  people  were  making  numer- 
ous settlements  on  the  western  side  of  the  Missouri  and  the 
beautiful  valleys  coming  up  to  it,  and  the  Indians  of  the 
unknown,  unexplored  regions  needed  looking  after,  for  pro- 
tection from  each  other,  and  enumeration  of  some  kind, 
and  to  be  kept  from  war  and  marauding,  as  well  as  could  be 
done  by  our  very  crude  and  cruel  Indian  system. 

Above  all  these  "the  gold  fever''  and  other  allurements 
had  caused  an  emigration  of  almost  one  hundred  thousand 
people  across  the  plains  annually.  In  this  condition  of 
things,  with  so  many  interests  requiring  attention,  terri- 
torial organization  was  a  necessity,  and  had  been  so  from 
1849-50;  but  it  was  purposely  delayed  until  the  propaganda 
had  firmly  inaugurated  the  Pierce  Administration  and  made 
everything  else  ready. 


CHAPTER  XXI. 

THIS  brings  us  to  the  beginning  of  the  mightiest  up- 
heaval in  all  our  history.  Our  institutions  up  to  that 
time,  the  civilizing  m.arch  westward  to  the  Mississippi 
and  the  Missouri  that  had  made  new  settlements,  villages, 
and  cities,  were  in  rapid  progress,  with  people  in  moving 
multitudes.  They  had  taken  with  them  their  wagons,  im- 
plements, and  stock,  and  the  means  of  carrying  on  their  in- 
dustries, along  with  the  arms  that  were  necessary  for  their 
defense  during  the  migration  and  at  their  homes. 

These  mighty  moving  populations  took  along  with  them 
the  tools  of  industry,  road-building,  and  agriculture.  They 
pushed  westward  with  their  guns,  axes,  plows,  and  hammers. 
Besides  these,  there  were  in  every  mover's  wagon  Bibles, 
Church  Disciplines,  the  Cathechisms,  Confessions  of  Faith, 
Pilgrim's  Progress,  Perseverance  of  the  Saints,  and  hymn- 
books;  and  the  children  had  the  little  outfit  they  used  in 
the  country  schools  from  whence  they  came,  having  perhaps 
their  grammars,  Murray  or  Kirkham,  some  old  arithmetics 
that  were  worn  and  thumbed  up  to  the  "Eule  of  Three," 
school  readers,  and  the  old  blue-covered  elementary  spelling- 
books  "that  Mr.  Webster  published  and  sent  westward  by 
the  million  copies."  On  all  these  were  based  our  future 
civilization. 

Slavery,  like  all  systems  of  law-protected  oppression  and 
corruption,  had  fastened  itself  on  the  existing  parties  and 
their  leaders  so  deeply  that  they  were  dulled  and  blunted 
against  all  efforts  at  reform,  and  so  cankered  with  profits, 
cruelties,  and  injustice  against  a  helpless  race  that  reform 

474 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  475 

was  an  impossibility  in  either  one  of  the  old  parties.  The 
building  up  of  a  new,  stronger  party  that  would  have  the 
courage  and  capacity  to  fight  slavery  from  top  to  bottom 
as  a  crime  against  the  enslaved,  and  no  less  against  the  free 
American  people,  a  system  of  labor  that  would  destroy  all 
other  systems  and  eventually  the  Nation  itself,  was  needed, 
and  these  emigrant  wagons  were  filled  with  a  class  of  men 
out  of  which  to  form  the  coming  anti-slavery  party. 

This  new  party  had  to  grow  up  among  the  free  and  inde- 
pendent people  of  the  free  States.  It  did  not  and  could 
not  expect  to  receive  support  from  the  politicians  of  other 
organizations  who  lived  on  the  profits  of  their  trade  and 
the  intrenched  power  in  and  about  the  National  Capital. 
There  were  many  men  and  many  movements  combining  to 
form  such  a  party  and  give  it  strength.  There  were  Garri- 
son and  his  uncompromising  paper  in  Boston;  Thurlow  Weed 
and  his  Journal  Sit  Albany;  Senators  Seward,  Chase,  Sumner, 
Wade,  and  Fessenden;  Horace  Greeley,  with  his  Tribune,  one 
of  the  strongest  and  most  fearless  champions  of  freedom 
in  the  beginning;  and  Abraham  Lincoln,  risen  to  the  highest 
leadership  he  could  reach  in  the  Democratic  State  of  Illinois. 

These  were  the  coming  leaders  against  slavery  in  some 
form  in  1853,  and  were  insignificant  in  power  compared 
with  the  Democratic  party,  that  could  pass  any  measure  it 
desired  through  Congress,  and  expect  its  faithful  execution 
and  friendly  interpretation  in  the  courts.  Slavery  was  in 
those  days,  from  1850  to  its  downfall,  in  the  heydey  of  its 
power.  It  was  not  a  system  of  labor  that  involved  much 
of  sentiment  or  theories,  but  a  plain,  matter-of-fact  business 
to  use  and  sell  the  Africans  like  cattle,  and  take  all  the 
profits  of  their  labor.  As  control  of  political  organization 
was  necessary  to  care  for  and  protect  the  entire  system,  it 
became  as  usurping,  ravenous,  and  oppressive  as  the  false 
and  ^\Tetched  system  upon  which  it  was  based. 

The  slave  population  of  our  country  was  then  about  four 


476  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

millions,  and  at  the  low  estimate  of  $100  each,  their  value 
was  $400,000,000 ;  but  as  they  were  bringing  profits  amount- 
ing on  an  average  to  $200  a  head  for  every  working  man 
and  woman,  it  brought  in  at  least  $250,000,000  annually 
above  the  cost  of  subsistence.  With  this  demonstration  it 
can  be  seen  that  if  Negroes  were  kept  a  safe  property  invest- 
ment, well  protected  under  law,  they  were  actually  worth 
over  $1,000  apiece,  or  an  aggregate  value  of  $2,500,000,000. 
This  computation  is  made  on  a  basis  of  ten  per  cent,  to 
which  could  be  added  the  value  of  the  increase,  which  was 
as  much  as  ten  per  cent,  making  a  total  of  three  billions  of 
money  in  Negro  slavery. 

With  such  enormous  values  recognized  as  existing  in 
men  and  women,  the  profits  of  which  were  gathered  regu- 
larly every  year  by  their  few  thousand  owners,  it  can  be 
well  understood  and  easily  shown  in  detail  why  it  was  no 
small  or  ordinary  undertaking  to  raise  up  a  new  party  able 
to  contend  against  a  power  so  great  and  so  strongly  in- 
trenched, that  to  human  insight  and  calculation  it  seemed 
unassailable. 

The  powers  of  the  slavery  system  were  great,  the  leaders 
had  reached  stronger  control  and  influence  than  they  ex- 
pected, which  made  them  more  grasping  and  tyrannical  in 
their  exercise  of  power.  They  dreaded  as  one  of  their  chief 
dangers  the  competition  of  free  labor,  and  sought  by  all 
their  means  and  ingenuity  to  exclude  it  from  their  States 
and  to  degrade  and  reduce  its  influence  in  the  Nation.  They 
refused  in  every  way,  social  and  political,  to  sustain  or  pro- 
tect free  labor ;  but  schemed  and  planned,  through  low  tariffs 
and  large  foreign  imported  manufactures,  their  free-trade 
laws  and  all  kinds  of  unfriendly  legislation,  to  break  down 
and  cripple  free  labor  wherever  it  was  possible. 

Our  import  taxes  ran  down  so  low  in  the  pro-slavery 
Democratic  Administrations  to  1860,  that  the  Government 
was  running  in  debt  in  time  of  peace,  and  its  credit  impaired 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  477 

by  low  rates  and  other  faulty  and  defective  revenue  laws 
purposely  so  made.  The  current  expenses  of  the  Govern- 
ment were  paid  in  part  out  of  the  proceeds  of  bonds  sold  in 
the  market,  drawing  twelve  per  cent  interest  and  bringing 
no  more  than  eighty  cents  on  the  dollar,  a  discount  of  twenty 
per  cent,  whereas  under  any  well-ordered  financial  policy 
five,  or  at  the  highest  six,  per  cent  bonds  should  have  sold 
at  par.  Besides,  in  the  peaceful  and  prosperous  condition 
of  our  country,  aided  by  the  abundant  gold  and  silver  dis- 
coveries, the  issue  of  bonds  was  inexcusable.  This  came 
as  the  result  of  pro-slavery  schemes  and  maladministration 
of  their  leaders. 

Tariff  laws  may  be  so  unjustly  discriminative  as  to  build 
up  and  enrich  favored  persons  and  monopolies;  nevertheless 
when  they  are  made  so  low  as  to  discriminate  against  our 
home  labor  or  production  they  are  as  bad  or  worse,  so  that 
in  making  tariff  and  excise  laws  a  happy  medium  needs  to 
be  preserved. 

In  the  winter  of  1853-54,  in  some  dubious,  unrecorded, 
and  never-since-explained  sort  of  method  the  slave-leaders 
determined  to  provoke  the  long-approaching  conflict  to  re- 
peal the  Missouri  Compromise  of  1820.  If  slavery  had  been 
one  of  the  rights  protected  by  the  Constitution,  as  conceded 
by  both  the  leading  parties  of  that  day,  the  repeal  would 
not  have  been  any  more  than  what  might  have  been  ex- 
pected. Whatever  might  have  been  the  reasonings  one  way 
or  the  other,  or  the  concessions  made  under  subterfuges  that 
always  needed  skilled  and  legal  interpretation,  here  was  a 
plain  breaking  asunder,  a  violated  agreement  of  thirty-three 
years  standing.  No  better  reason  was  given  than  that  it 
had  been  repealed  in  effect,  in  accordance  with  the  principles 
and  spirit  of  the  compromises  of  1850.  To  tell  the  truth 
that  reveals  something  of  the  crafty  hidden  work  of  the 
slave  power,  the  Missouri  Compromise  had  been  repealed 
three  years  before  the  people  knew  it! 


478  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

Joshua  E.  Giddings,  of  Ohio,  the  sturdy  anti-slavery 
leader  for  so  many  years  in  the  House  of  Eepresentatives, 
being  asked  during  the  discussion  how  the  bill  as  it  was 
before  the  repealing  amendment  was  proposed  agreed  with 
the  Whig  and  Democratic  party  platforms,  replied:  "The 
limit  of  slavery  to  the  south  line  of  the  Missouri  Territory 
and  west  was  thirty-six  degrees  thirty  minutes,  and  was 
established  by  the  Missouri  Compromise  prohibition.  This 
law  stands  perpetually,  and  I  do  not  think  it  would  receive 
any  validity  by  re-enactment.  There  I  leave  the  matter. 
It  is  very  clear  that  the  territory  included  in  the  treaty 
ceding  the  Louisiana  Territory  must  be  forever  free  unless 
the  law  is  repealed."  This  declaration  of  Giddings  further 
alarmed  the  slave-leaders,  and  they  determined  that,  regard- 
less of  all  consequences,  the  Missouri  restriction  should  in 
explicit  terms  be  repealed. 

This  discussion  and  reopening  of  the  question  made 
hundreds  of  thousands  of  people  in  the  free  States  angry, 
and  raised  up  Abolitionists  in  some  stage  of  development 
all  over  the  country.  The  condemnation  of  free  voters  in 
the  press  and  through  every  other  avenue  of  public  ex- 
pression was  more  emphatic  and  determined  than  it  had 
ever  been  against  any  single  movement  of  the  slave  power. 
However  concealed  and  remote  other  schemes  had  been,  the 
drift  and  effect  of  this  one  was  clear  and  distinct  enough  for 
the  free  State  people  to  comprehend. 

The  notable  issue  concerning  the  repeal  of  this  compro- 
mise line  was  the  culminating  encroachment  of  the  slave 
power  that  aroused  the  free  States  to  the  imminent  danger 
so  near  at  hand.  To  that  time  the  South  had  gained  three 
States  out  of  the  Louisiana  cession  of  territory.  These  were 
Louisiana,  Missouri,  and  Arkansas.  They  received  also  all 
of  the  Spanish  cession  of  1819,  which  was  admitted  as  the 
State  of  Florida;  and  Texas  was  admitted  with  the  privilege 
of  making  four  other  States  as  the  result  of  the  Mexican 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  479 

conquest.  While  these  five  of  the  slave  States  were  ad- 
mitted, Iowa  and  California  were  the  only  free  States  gained 
by  the  cessions  during  the  same  period. 

In  1854  the  plans  of  the  propaganda  were  suddenly 
changed,  so  far  as  the  public  had  knowledge,  and  the  de- 
liberate scheme  was  put  in  operation  to  make  Kansas  an- 
other slave  State  out  of  a  part  of  the  territory  of  the  Louis- 
iana Purchase.  In  following  the  few  facts,  it  appears  that 
in  the  condition  of  the  Territories  some  kind  of  an  organ- 
ization had  become  a  necessity.  The  few  people  living  in 
them  had  for  years  sent  delegates  to  Congress,  pleading 
for  a  territorial  organization.  Thousands  of  emigrants  were 
crossing,  and  great  numbers  were  getting  ready  to  settle 
in  them.  Judge  Douglas  was  chairman  of  the  Senate  Com- 
mittee on  Territories,  and  Eichardson,  one  of  his  friends 
from  Illinois,  a  member  of  the  House  of  Representatives, 
was  also  chairman  of  the  House  Committee  on  Territories. 
In  this  condition  these  two  held  firm  control  of  all  legis- 
lation for  the  Territories,  and  would  do  so  unless  they  were 
removed  by  party  action. 

On  the  24th  of  January,  1854,  Judge  Douglas  introduced 
an  act  in  the  Senate  for  the  organization  of  the  Territory 
of  Nebraska;  later  it  was  so  amended  as  to  make  two  Terri- 
tories out  of  it,  dividing  it  into  Kansas  and  Nebraska.  The 
striking  feature  of  the  measure  was  that  one  section  de- 
clared that  the  Compromise  of  1820  was  void,  because  it 
was  inconsistent  with  the  principle  of  non-intervention  by 
Congress  with  slavery  in  the  States  or  Territories  as  recog- 
nized by  the  Compromise  Measures  of  1850.  Previous  to 
this  action  of  Judge  Douglas,  on  February  2,  1853,  Richard- 
son, of  Illinois,  had  introduced  bills  into  the  House  of  Rep- 
resentatives for  three  Territories,  which  were  debated  and 
referred  on  the  8th,  and  passed  on  the  10th  of  February, 
without  the  repealing  clause  of  the  Senate  bill;  showing 
conclusively  that  the  determination  to  repeal  the  Missouri 


480  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

Compromise  was  reached  and  agreed  to  between  FebriTary, 
1853,  and  January,  1854. 

The  discussion  over  this  repeal  was  one  of  the  most 
absorbing,  fervent,  and  exciting  ever  held  in  Congress.  The 
anti-slavery  societies,  the  Churches,  hundreds  of  public  men, 
politicians,  and  the  newspapers  took  it  up,  and  it  became  the 
question  talked  of,  disputed  upon,  and  debated  everywhere. 
The  country  reached  a  fever-heat  on  the  subject,  and  for 
the  first  time  the  free  States  began  a  general  discussion  of 
the  entire  slavery  contention,  regardless  of  all  former  con- 
cessions and  compromises. 

Judge  Douglas  seemed  to  be  selected  everywhere  in  the 
free  States  for  the  most  violent  denunciation.  He  was  de- 
nounced personally,  and  as  the  chief  political  leader  who 
was  responsible,  in  rasping  and  exciting,  declarations  and 
resolutions  almost  every  day,  and  was  burned  in  effig}'  some- 
where every  week.  This  mauling  and  scoring  of  political 
speakers  who  were  doing  no  more  than  the  party  leaders 
had  done  without  much  public  concern  for  a  half-century, 
became  a  rage,  and  took  on  the  zeal  of  a  crusade.  Thus  it 
went  on  in  a  furious  way  for  the  four  months  during  which 
the  measure  was  under  discussion  in  Congress.  It  has  been 
written  of  by  every  one  who  has  attempted  any  relation 
of  the  dispute  or  the  angered  conditions  existing,  often  with- 
out much  consideration  of  the  steps  in  the  slavery  encroach- 
ments leading  to  it. 

While  this  fierce  dispute  was  going  on  in  full  progress, 
Douglas  neither  failed  nor  faltered  in  the  assertion  and 
defense  of  his  belief.  It  was  the  settled  agreement  of  all 
parties  joining  in  the  compromises  of  1850,  and  so  recog- 
nized in  principle  afterwards  in  the  admission  of  California, 
that  the  slavery  question  was  to  be  left  to  the  decision  of 
the  people  in  the  Territories.  He  held  his  ground  and  sus- 
tained himself  in  the  estimation  of  his  party,  as  he  was 
informed  from  time  to  time,  not  particularly  in  the  South- 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  481 

ern  States — for  he  was  never  a  favorite  in  most  of  them — 
but  in  the  Northern,  the  Free,  and  Border  States,  where  he 
appeared  to  be  holding  his  leadership  well. 

He  bore  himself  patiently,  it  might  be  said  doggedly, 
under  the  furious  discussion,  and  whether  he  was  right  or 
wrong  in  his  contention,  he  emerged  from  it  the  strongest 
leader  in  his  party  in  the  Free  States  and  those  of  the 
Border  States  like  Missouri,  where  men  were  left  somewhat 
free  to  express  themselves.  His  followers  sustained  him  as 
faithfully  as  his  opponents  denounced  him,  many  of  whom 
had  just  been  suddenly  awakened  to  the  alarming  encroach- 
ments of  slavery.  While  it  is  true  that  Douglas  was  as  much 
in  the  wrong  as  his  party  was,  but  hardly  more  so,  he  was 
then  in  the  second  term  of  his  senatorial  contest  against 
Jefferson  Davis  as  the  leader  of  the  slave-propaganda,  in 
possession  of  the  knowledge  of  how  to  contend  with  them 
and  fight  it  out  to  the  end  better  than  any  other  man  before 
Lincoln's  inauguration. 

Douglas  has  been  abused,  slurred  over,  and  written  down 
so  much,  that  his  high  place  and  inestimable  services  to  our 
country  have  been  altogether  too  much  overlooked.  He 
became  the  leader  of  the  Northern,  or  Free  State,  Democracy 
in  1845-49,  and  never  lost  it.  He  could  have  been  nomi- 
nated for  President  at  either  of  three  Conventions  before 
1860  if  he  had  been  willing  to  make  the  concessions  that 
Cass,  Pierce,  Marcy,  and  Buchanan  were  only  too  willing 
to  make,  and  a  dozen  or  two  others  who  were  beseeching 
political  friends  and  adversaries  to  find  opportunity  to  make 
any  concession  that  would  start  them  on  the  road  to  the 
Presidency. 

The  facts  will  be  better  disclosed  as  we  proceed;  but  it 
will  be  well  to  remember  what  he  could  do  and  did  to  re- 
main his  party's  leader,  and  that  he  made  no  movement 
which  would  displace  him  as  such.  The  Democracy  of  that 
day  was  all-powerful.  It  discarded  and  tossed  its  eminent 
31 


482  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

leaders  aside  like  discarded  toys,  and  left  them  helpless  and 
powerless  in  or  out  of  the  party.  It  had  in  this  way  retired 
more  eminent  men  than  any  other  two  parties  in  the  country 
had  ever  done.  Of  those  of  its  leaders  who  were  in  any  way 
ineligible  to  the  Presidency  it  had  stranded  Van  Buren, 
Marcy,  Cass,  and  Benton,  and  was  consuming  in  its  pro- 
slavery  progress  all  there  was  of  Pierce  and  Buchanan. 
Douglas  determined  that  it  should  not  destroy  him,  and  that 
he  would  not  concede  his  political  beliefs  nor  his  integrity 
to  get  their  nomination  for  the  Presidency.  From  this  time 
forward  the  slave-leaders  planned  his  downfall,  but  could 
never  shake  him  from  his  place  as  a  leader. 

His  remarkable  rise  to  power  and  influence,  his  untiring 
and  marvelous  perseverance,  his  accession  to  the  leadership 
of  the  loyal  part  of  his  part}^,  which  was  as  much  as  two- 
thirds  of  it,  the  tenacity  and  ability  with  which  he  held  his 
undisputed  control,  his  fifteen  years'  desperate  contest  with 
and  against  the  ablest  and  shrewdest,  the  wisest  and  strong- 
est leaders  of  the  slave  power,  is  the  story  of  one  of  the 
most  capable,  daring,  and  unyielding  Americans  who  ever 
served  our  country  or  led  a  party.  We  hope  to  correct  some 
errors  concerning  this  truly  great  man  and  worthy  leader, 
and  might  well  hope  to  correct  all  of  them. 

The  Kansas-Nebraska  Bill  was  in  this  fevered  excitement 
discussed  for  about  four  months,  from  January  to  May, 
1854,  when  it  passed  Congress  and  became  a  law.  In  the 
closing  argument  on  it  Douglas  offered  the  amendment 
which  was  adopted,  and  without  which  he  would  not  have 
supported  it:  "And  it  is  further  declared  that  the  true  in- 
tent and  meaning  of  this  act  is  not  to  legislate  slavery  into 
any  State  or  Territory  and  not  to  exclude  it  therefrom,  but 
to  leave  the  people  perfectly  free  to  regulate  their  domestic 
institutions  in  their  own  way."  He  was  approached  by  one 
of  the  prominent  Southern  senators,  with  the  proposal,  that 
if  he  would  withdraw  this  amendment,  the  South  would 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  483 

agree  to  his  nomination  for  President  in  1856.  He  very 
promptly  declined  doing  so,  and  his  faithful  and  insurmount- 
able defense  of  this  same  amendment  and  the  people's  fight 
for  a  free  State  in  Kansas  under  its  operation,  in  the  same 
Senate,  and  his  success,  proved  his  sincerity  and  integrity. 

There  were  forty  Democrats  in  the  House  of  Eepresenta- 
tives  who  revolted  and  voted  against  the  bill.  All  the  Demo- 
crats in  the  Senate,  including  General  Cass,  of  Michigan, 
voted  for  it.  About  all  the  Whigs  in  the  House  voted  for 
it,  and  all  the  Whig  senators  from  the  South,  except  Bell, 
of  Tennessee,  did  likewise.  In  this  angered  Congressional 
contest  the  fight  for  freedom  against  slavery  was  trans- 
ferred from  the  Capital,  with  its  Presidents,  Cabinets, 
courts,  and  Congresses,  to  the  plains  west  of  the  Missouri, 
where  it  was  going  anj^way,  without  regard  to  party  leaders 
in  1854,  and  in  the  same  way  to  the  people  of  the  Nation 
in  1S61. 

The  repeal  of  the  Missouri  Compromise  was,  without 
doubt,  forced  upon  the  Southern  leaders  by  the  position 
taken  by  Seward,  Chase,  and  Giddings.  Through  their  in- 
fluence, the  new  Territories  were  filling  up  rapidly  with 
active  Northern  people,  who  would  have  excluded  slavery. 
At  this  juncture  the  indiscreet  zeal  of  Archibald  Dixon,  the 
pro-slavery  Whig  senator,  who  succeeded  Clay  and  truly 
represented  the  pro-slavery  people  of  his  State,  as  stated 
elsewhere,  expedited  the  repeal.  The  Whigs  and  Democrats 
alike  believed  they  had  the  power,  and  that  the  opportunity 
was  before  them.  They  were  earnestly  devoted  to  the  im- 
mediate extension  of  slavery. 

Kentucky  was  raising  slaves,  like  the  older  border  States, 
for  the  market,  just  as  they  were  raising  mules.  It  had 
passed  the  era  of  Clay  and  Crittenden  and  the  more  sympa- 
thetic school  of  statesmen,  and  was  then  ready  to  join  and 
follow  the  business-like  leaders,  who  had  no  hopes  of  future 
compromises  with  the  anti-slavery  people.     To  put  it  in 


484  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

Dixon's  plain  language,  "We  have  no  use  for  compromises 
any  longer,  and  will  dispose  of  those  in  existence  in  our 
own  way  as  fast  as  we  can,  and  be  rid  of  them." 

The  plan  of  the  leaders  was  to  hurry  forward  the  terri- 
tory-enslaving dictum  of  the  Supreme  Court,  eventually 
known  as  the  "Dred  Scott  Decision,"  and  follow  it  up,  or 
not  as  might  appear  expedient,  with  a  repeal  of  the  Missouri 
Compromise.  In  either  result  the  slaveholders  were  to  rush 
into  the  new  Territories  with  their  slaves,  where  they  were 
to  be  sustained  in  all  the  strength  and  forms  of  law,  which 
would  be  amply  provided  for.  The  sleepy,  old  court 
drawled  along  as  usual.  The  delaying  processes  of  its  old 
men  were  too  well  set  in  lifetime  habits  to  mend,  even  in 
the  pressing  emergencies.  It  was  expected  that  their  de- 
cision would  plant  slavery  in  all  the  Territories,  and  as 
fast  as  submitted  to  in  all  the  States,  under  authority  of 
the  Constitution,  as  construed  by  themselves,  regardless  of 
compromises,  restrictions,  or  unfriendly  legislation. 

The  court  was  willing  enough,  and  in  the  end  did  all 
that  was  expected  of  it,  except  that  the  sleepy,  slavery-smit- 
ten council  of  Constitutional  relics  could  not  be  moved 
in  time  to  prevent  the  eruption  caused  by  slavery  extension 
in  another  direction.  Nevertheless  it  came  very  near  to 
obliterating  these  fossils,  with  their  prerogatives  and  prece- 
dents. They  aroused  the  unquenchable,  unpurchasable 
American  spirit  that  was  coming  to  foresee  the  desperate 
struggle,  and  arrange  for  it.  They  prepared  for  a  fair  fight 
for  freedom  whenever  the  debasing  slavery-power  threw  down 
the  gauntlet,  regardless  of  Administrations,  Congresses,  or 
courts. 

The  Senate  was  strongly  Democratic,  so  that  no  thought 
existed  outside  of  it  that  the  slavery  break-up  would  be 
precipitated  in  that  body,  where  its  well-managed  commit- 
tees had  control  of  all  the  measures  that  passed  through 
it.     Least  of  all  was  it  expected  that  it  would  come  from 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  485 

one  of  its  newest  pro-slavery  auxiliaries.  Archibald  Dixon, 
Clay's  successor,  had  not  been  taken  into  the  confidence  of 
the  Davis  regime.  He  was  not  seeking  fame.  He  had  been 
governor  of  Kentucky,  and  his  mind  was  particularly  fitted 
and  trained  for  executive  and  close  business  management  of 
all  public  afi^airs,  including,  of  course,  slavery  and  his  State's 
tobacco  and  Negro  raising  relation  to  it.  He  was  indiscreet, 
and  knew  scarcely  enough  about  subjects  of  National  legis- 
lation to  be  aware  of  the  existence  of  the  pro-slavery  power 
within  the  Democratic  part}^  and  its  absolute  control  of 
all  slavery  legislation.  He  was  plain  and  candid  enough, 
January  16,  1854,  to  offer,  in  the  form  of  an  amendment 
to  the  pending  Territorial  Act,  just  what  he  and  his  people 
wanted  and  expected,  in  effect,  "that  the  Missouri  Compro- 
mise line  be,  and  is  hereby,  repealed,  and  that  the  citizens  of 
the  several  States  shall  be  at  liberty  to  take  and  hold  their 
slaves  within  any  of  these  Territories."  He  knew  that 
Congress  had  the  power,  in  their  construction  of  the  Com- 
promise Measures,  and  that  the  powers  of  the  Government 
were  all  in  pro-slavery  hands.  He  was  realistic  enough  to 
offer  and  secure  the  passage  of  such  a  law,  with  no  doubt- 
ful facings  to  embarass  and  hide  him,  as  the  Northern 
statesmen  had  who  were  serving  in  the  slavery  cause.  On 
his  introduction  of  this  amendment,  the  consternation  was 
as  sudden  as  it  was  unexpected.  Neither  it  nor  Dixon  could 
be  quashed  or  laid  aside;  for,  although  a  very  plain-spoken 
man,  he  was  enough  of  a  leader  to  press  forward,  and  make 
himself  a  more  conspicuous  one,  whatever  might  be  the 
marked-out  lines  of  the  Davis-Benjamin  control. 

Consultations  were  immediately  held,  and  Dixon,  from 
all  that  followed,  was  heard  at  once  and  confided  in.  There 
were  hurried  conferences  and  earnest  caucusing  on  that 
day,  and  the  next  few  days;  for  the  subject  had  to  be  taken 
up  and  disposed  of,  somewhat  in  Dixon's  way,  or  he  would 
have  proceeded  with  it  alone  in  his  plain  Kentucky  plan 


486  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

of  expediting  business.  Xo  more  expeditions  sort  of  men 
have  got  into  Congress  than  our  ex-governors;  and  Dixon 
was  one  of  them  who  was  not  ver}^  far  from  becoming  a 
leader  in  that  pro-slavery  Democratic  Congress  in  the  days 
of  the  elegant  Pierce.  As  it  was,  he  could  have  held  his 
leadership  for  a  time  at  least,  and  forced  the  measure 
through  under  his  views  of  form  and  style,  if  he  had  not 
been  satisfied  that  the  Democratic  Senate  would  do  so  in 
its  regular  way  through  its  committees;  so  when  he  was 
convinced  of  this  he  conceded  the  right  to  the  Senate  Com- 
mittee on  Territories,  of  which  Douglas  was  chairman. 

There  were  immediate  caucuses  of  the  propaganda,  when 
Davis,  Stephens,  Atchison,  Benjamin,  and  perhaps  Breckin- 
ridge, were  all  present.  Douglas  was  not  called  in;  but  these 
caucuses  were  never  held  with  any  determining  result  with- 
out his  knowledge;  for  in  comprehensiveness  and  grasp  of 
pending  and  passing  affairs  he  was  easily  their  master,  and 
usually  anticipated  every  movement  in  all  their  kaleido- 
scopic churnings  and  revolutions,  then  so  common  and  fre- 
quent. 

They  were  eager  enough  for  the  discomfiture  of  Doug- 
las through  the  leadership  of  Dixon  in  the  progress  of  the 
repeal,  if  they  could  have  arrested  it  at  that  point.  But 
they  foresaw  that  Dixon's  leadership  might  carry  them, 
no  telling  whither,  in  such  perilous,  unheard-of  times,  and 
they  discreetly  decided  that  it  would  not  do  to  hazard  a 
change  from  the  doubted  and  suspected  Douglas  to  as  new 
a  recruit  as  the  Whig  pro-slavery  Dixon.  Hence  the  strong, 
clear-headed,  unscrupulous  Atchison  was  selected  to  nego- 
tiate with  Douglas,  in  a  pleasant,  roundabout  way,  of  course, 
with  all  of  the  dissembling  diplomacy  he  could  master.  It 
was  a  difficult  proceeding  for  a  man  of  his  direct  and  almost 
abrupt  manner  of  speech,  particularly  so  for  a  consultation 
with  and  proposal  to  Douglas  for  his  abdication  from  his 
long-held  chairmanship  of  the  Committee  on  Territories. 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  487 

The  penetrating  vision  of  an  experienced  statesman  like 
Douglas  could,  and  did,  discern  the  object  of  Atchison's 
blundering  proposal  before  he  had  disclosed  it  in  his  artless 
speech. 

When  Benton  was  so  cruelly  overthrown  b}^  the  pro- 
slavery  Democracy  of  Missouri,  by  direction  of  Calhoun 
and  Jefferson  Davis,  James  Green,  a  lawyer  of  good  ca- 
pacit}^,  was  elected  in  Benton's  place;  but  Atchison,  the 
most  daring,  and  one  of  the  most  experienced,  unscrupu- 
lous border  men,  succeeded  to  Benton's  leadership,  as  far 
as  the  pro-slavery  senators  could  arrange  it. 

When  it  is  considered  that,  if  Douglas  could  have  been 
deposed  from  his  leadership,  it  will  be  conceded  that  Atchi- 
son was  the  most  appropriate  selection  that  could  be  made 
to  succeed  him,  and,  further,  to  become  the  director,  border 
general,  and  superintendent  of  the  worst  of  the  work  to 
force  slavery  into  Kansas.  He  had  been  a  senator  from 
1841.  His  work,  attention  to  business,  and  completeness 
of  knowledge  were  recognized  in  making  him  president  pro 
tem.  of  the  most  thoroughly  pro-slavery  Senate  ever  assem- 
bled under  the  Constitution.  He  was  so  enthusiastic  in  his 
attachment  to  the  institution  as  to  declare,  "I  am  entirely 
devoted  to  the  interests  of  the  South,  and  I  would  sacrifice 
everything  but  my  hope  of  heaven  to  advance  her  welfare." 
This  shows  unusual  piety  for  such  a  man;  and  in  the  light 
of  fast-following  events  it  seems  diflficult  to  understand  why 
he  made  any  exceptions,  seeing  that  his  zeal  for  slavery  was 
so  different  from  anything  else  we  ever  heard  about  his 
desire  for  "heaven."  This  was  the  nature  of  his  devotion 
while  a  senator  and  Acting  Vice-President. 

Afterwards,  in  1856,  when  out  of  service  in  the  Senate, 
his  "devotion"  kept  him  steady  in  his  work  of  waging  war 
for  slavery  propagation.  He  retained  his  place  as  border 
leader,  the  advance  protector  of  "the  interests  of  the 
South,"  commander  over  all  Territorial  officers,  and  super- 


488  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

intendent  of  all  the  ''pro-slavery  damnations"  that  inaugu- 
rated border  warfare  on  a  peaceful  people.  He  was  him- 
self, in  one  or  more  forays,  the  commander  of  more  than 
two  thousand  armed  border  ruffians  from  Missouri,  whom 
he  led  into  Kansas,  and  held  there,  for  hostile  purposes, 
until  they  were  driven  out  by  James  H.  Lane.  The  latter 
was  as  thoroughly  devoted  to  making  Kansas  a  free  State  as 
Atchison  was  against  it;  and  Lane  had  the  advantage  of 
possessing  better  guns  and  as  much,  if  not  more,  courage 
when  the  test  was  made  on  the  field  of  war,  which  he  had 
invited. 

Thus  Atchison  became  the  chief  of  a  dastardly  border 
war  that  was  so  full  of  atrocities  that  it  would  take  the 
flame  of  a  burning  sun  to  light  them  up.  It  was  an  invasion 
that  drove  men  from  their  peaceful  homes,  and  frenzied 
them  by  the  thousand.  It  was  the  cause,  in  one  instance, 
without  doubt,  of  driving  the  frantic  old  man  of  Ossawat- 
omie,  with  less  than  a  dozen  followers,  into  a  counter  in- 
vasion of  Virginia,  that  made  the  slaveholders  from  Ac- 
comac  to  San  Antonio  shiver  like  an  aspen  in  the  autumnal 
gales.  And  it  took  the  whole  power  of  the  Government 
under  the  worse-quaking  Administration  of  Buchanan  to 
save  Virginia  or  slavery,  or  both,-  while  it  did  not  raise  a 
hand  to  save  a  thousand  perishing  settlers  in  their  homes 
on  the  plains  of  Kansas. 

Hoping  this  will  give  the  reader  the  information  we 
desire  as  to  who  Atchison  was,  it  will  be  plain  that,  when 
he  approached  Judge  Douglas  with  his  proposal  in  January, 
1854,  the  judge  thoroughly  understood  his  character  and 
meaning.  Atchison  said  that  the  Missouri  Compromise 
ought  to  be  repealed,  and  that  "If  you,  Judge  Douglas,  will 
resign  as  chairman  of  the  Committee  on  Territories,  I  will 
take  your  place.  You  can  have  any  other  place  on  any  other 
committee,  or  in  the  Senate,  and  I  will  report  a  bill  for  the 
repeal.    I  have  been  selected  by  a  committee  of  a  Democratic 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  489 

caucus  of  the  Senate  to  make  this  proposal  to  you."  Doug- 
las knew  as  well  as  he  did  the  nature  of  the  demand  and 
the  threat  that  was  scarcely  hidden  behind  it.  lie  knew 
that  the  threat  would  be  enforced  if  he  did  not  introduce 
the  bill  or  relinquish  his  position,  as  Atchison  requested, 
and  that  any  default  of  his  would  be  enforced  by  all  the 
power  of  the  party  if  he  did  not  promptly  obey. 

The  request  was  as  pleasant  as  an  arrogant  man  like 
Atchison  could  make  it;  but  it  had  all  the  power  of  a  Demo- 
cratic caucus  and  the  relentless  desire  of  Jefferson  Davis 
for  Douglas's  overthrow.  Whatever  may  have  been  Doug- 
las's frame  of  mind,  he  did  not  for  a  moment  lose  his  wits, 
and  was  in  full  composure  and  exercise  of  his  great  abilities ; 
so  he  pleasantly,  as  he  had  been  requested,  replied,  "Mr. 
Vice-President,  I  will  consider  the  proposition  you  have 
made,  and  give  you  my  reply  to-morrow." 

The  upheaval  was  so  great,  the  excitement  in  Congress 
was  so  intense  in  a  very  short  time  that  many  men  soon 
forgot,  or  did  not  understand,  the  critical  situation  and  the 
danger  in  which  Judge  Douglas  was  placed.  Many  of  his 
avowed  supporters  were  furious  in  denouncing  him,  with- 
out a  thought  as  to  what  he  could  have  done  if  he  had  pur- 
sued any  other  course  than  he  did.  They  did  not  give  his 
situation  very  careful  thought;  but  he  did  as  much  as  he 
could  within  the  time  he  had  promised.  He  got  the  name 
of  the  "little  giant,"  which  he  surely  earned;  and  he  was 
all  that  the  name  indicated  in  talent,  industry,  strength 
of  mind,  and  activity,  so  clearly  established  in  his  lifetime 
work  that  it  is  imperishable,  and  will  remain  so.  He  was 
the  leader  of  the  loyal  patriotic  Democracy  for  fifteen  years, 
which  the  slaveholders  and  their  leaders  knew  to  their  detri- 
ment and  better  than  any  other  men;  for  he  was,  during 
the  whole  time,  the  strongest  obstacle  in  their  path.  Nei- 
ther Calhoun  nor  Davis  nor  all  their  associates  ever  shook 
him  loose  one  moment  from  his  seat.    He  knew  as  well  as 


490 


ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 


they  did,  and  as  all  do  now,  that  if  they  could  have  over- 
thrown him,  or  could  have  persuaded  him  to  desert  or  be- 
tray his  people,  there  was  no  other  man  who  could  take  his 
place. 

If  Douglas  could  have  been  overthrown,  or  had  suc- 
cumbed to  siren  tongues,  where,  indeed,  was  the  man  who 
could  have  led  the  hosts  of  the  loyal  Demacracy?  Men  have 
written  and  spoken  of  him  and  of  the  time  with  careless, 
some  with  utter,  disregard  of  what  he  did  and  whom  he 
led.  Were  this  all  the  information  to  be  had,  it  would  lead 
to  the  certain  conclusion  that  he  and  all  his  following  were 
defeated  by  the  passage  of  the  Kansas-Nebraska  Act,  and 
permanently  so,  as  the  result  of  his  debates  with  Lincoln 
in  1858.  The  truth  is  that  after  all  the  political  contests 
had  been  waged  against  him  by  his  antagonists  and  by  for- 
mer friends,  he  still  held  the  strongest  body  under  his  per- 
sonal leadership  who  ever  followed  any  man  in  a  well-defined 
contest — a  host  of  nearly  one  million  four  hundred  thou- 
sand patriotic  Democrats,  who  had  never  bended  their  knees 
to  the  Baal  of  slavery  disunion. 

Douglas  was  not  guided,  as  an  anti-slavery  man,  by  sym- 
pathy, but  grew  up  under  the  prevailing  statesmanship  of 
our  country  in  all  its  earlier  parties,  that  recognized  some 
kind  of  right  to  hold  slaves  under  the  Constitution.  He 
did  not  believe  that  any  kind  of  human  government  gave 
men  unqualified  freedom,  and  that  all  systems,  even  our  own 
Democracy,  were  not  free  from  the  means  of  grinding  op- 
pressions of  white  men;  and  he  was  free  to  say  and  believe 
that  no  race  of  men,  save  those  of  Europe  or  our  own  coun- 
tr}^,  were  qualified  for  self-government.  He  believed  that 
anti-slavery  agitators  were  impractical,  many  of  them 
fanatical,  and  that  they  were  doing  more  harm  than  good. 
These  views  he  believed  to  be  true,  and  talked  so  of  them 
in  an  easy  manner,  as  he  did  any  subject;  and  he  held  as 
good  a  friend  as  Nimmo  Browne  to  be  fanatical  and,  at 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  491 

best,  a  long  way  ahead  of  his  time  in  the  advocacy  of  his 
anti-slavery  opinions. 

But,  fully  impressed  as  he  was  with  these  opinions,  he 
seldom  discussed  them,  and,  to  our  knowledge,  never  in 
public.  He  was  one  of  the  strongest  anti-slavery  advocates 
we  ever  knew.  However,  he  was  a  statesman  and  a  leader 
of  a  party  which  held  no  anti-slavery  sympathies;  but  they 
were  all  patriotic,  and  followed  Douglas  because  of  his 
masterful  ablities  and  corresponding  patriotic  ideas.  He 
had  an  enlightened  intellect  that  grasped  and  held  what 
was  known  of  man  and  government  from  the  beginnings  of 
history.  In  his  light  and  knowledge,  and  representing  the 
people  he  did,  in  full  consideration  of  all  our  environments, 
he  held  slavery  of  any  kind,  direct  or  indirect,  or  enforced 
labor  at  half-paid  wages,  to  be  an  unmitigated,  withering 
curse,  to  be  got  rid  of  as  soon  as  possible  under  forms  of 
law;  but  under  our  democratic  system  he  held  it  to  be 
the  absolute  right  of  the  people  themselves  to  accomplish 
any  reform. 

To  this  end,  in  his  own  way,  and  in  a  service  that  no 
other  man  could  have  rendered,  he  labored  and  devoted 
himself  with  a  tenacity  and  determination  that  consumed 
his  vital  powers  and  his  strongly-built,  rugged  frame  at  the 
early  age  of  forty-eight  years;  but  he  lived  long  enough  to 
see  the  rising  people  uniting  and  able  to  defend  the  Na- 
tion's freedom. 

Douglas  was  an  outspoken  opponent  of  slavery  before 
his  entry  into  Congress,  and  was  in  full  accord  with  the 
Democracy  of  Illinois  in  their  clear  and  distinct  resolu- 
tions against  the  extension  of  slavery  into  any  free  Terri- 
tory. In  his  second  term  he  made  his  celebrated  defense 
of  General  Jackson  and  his  conduct  at  New  Orleans  in  one 
of  the  most  exhaustive  and  masterly  arguments  ever  de- 
livered in  Congress.  He  amply  sustained  Jackson's  high 
military   capacities   and   his   prerogative   to   exercise   com- 


492  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

plete  authority  at  New  Orleans,  thus  saving  the  city  and  the 
entire  Louisiana  Territory,  and  no  telling  how  much  be- 
sides, from  the  seizure  and  occupation  of  Britain. 

The  "Expunging  Resolutions"  were  passed  in  the  enthu- 
siasm of  Douglas's  fine  argument  and  oration,  which  was 
not  only  a  high  tribute  and  Just  recognition  of  the  great 
hero  Democrat,  but  left  Douglas,  although  a  very  young 
man,  one  of  the  undisputed  leaders  of  his  party.  By  reason 
of  this  grateful  service  and  defense  of  General  Jackson, 
he  gained  the  powerful  enmity  of  Calhoun  and  his  trusted 
followers,  who  never  neglected  an  opportunity  for  the  hu- 
miliation or  political  overthrow  of  any  friend  or  defender 
of  the  patriotic  Jackson,  who  so  expeditiously  and  efEectu- 
ally,  for  the  time,  suppressed  Calhoun  and  his  Carolina 
nullification  schemes  in  1830-33. 

From  that  time  forward  Douglas,  along  with  Benton, 
was  marked,  a  victim  for  entanglement  and  destruction, 
under  the  slavers'  ceaseless  vigilance.  His  early  anti-slavery 
record  was  against  him  also.  This,  Avith  the  defense  of  Jack- 
son, made  it  certain,  even  after  Calhoun's  complete  restora- 
tion, when  Douglas  had  retired  from  public  life,  that  neither 
Douglas  nor  any  other  such  Democrats  would  ever  gain 
favor  or  the  slightest  concession  outside  of  unavoidable  ne- 
cessity from  the  slave-propaganda  of  Calhoun  or  his  suc- 
cessor, Jefferson  Davis.  Whatever  place  or  position  he 
attained  or  held  in  the  party  was  earned  and  maintained 
only  by  stubborn  and  continued  contest  with  these  men. 

With  full  knowledge  of  the  complications  surrounding 
him,  and  that  he  was  in  the  net  that  would  drag  him  down 
if  he  failed  to  cut  his  way  through  their  entanglements, 
he  was  fully  alive  to  the  slightest  interference  against  his 
leadership.  In  this  course  of  the  coming  political  upheaval 
he  was  confronted  with  Atchison  and  his  well-understood 
request  for  abdication  of  his  leadership;  for  it  could  mean 
nothing  less.    He  was  better  prepared  to  understand  what 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  493 

wonld  be  the  results  of  his  action  in  either  course  than 
any  one  about  him.  In  the  situation,  too,  he  was  where  no 
one  could  advise  him;  for  he  was  better  qualified  to  act 
than  any  one  whom  he  could  approach  or  advise  with.  He 
was  fully  aware  of  the  delicate  and  precarious  position  he 
held,  and  that  advice  from  one  not  qualified  to  be  a  judge 
might  embarrass  him  to  no  good  purpose;  hence  he  took  the 
responsibility  to  decide  for  himself. 

He  knew  something  of,  but  did  not  likely  anticipate  all, 
the  indignation  and  resistance  it  would  arouse,  and  the  bit- 
ter and  unrelenting  denunciations  it  would  bring  down  upon 
him  to  agree  to  the  open  repeal  of  the  Missouri  Compro- 
mise; but  he  knew  well  that,  in  political  movements,  as  in 
war,  if  he  firmly  held  his  place,  and  assumed  responsibility 
for  this  aggression  demanded  by  the  slavery-leaders,  what- 
ever might  be  the  results  in  time,  it  was  sure  to  provoke  a 
storm  and  political  disruption.  Nevertheless  he  was  sure 
that  he  should  hold  his  leadership  and  abide  the  shock, 
and  that  if  this  invited  the  assault  upon  himself,  he  must 
defend  and  counter  assault  without  repining  or  complaint. 

He  knew  what  thousands  of  unthinking  people,  many 
of  whom  were  tolerably  well  informed,  did  not  consider, 
that  if  Atchison  succeeded  him  as  chairman  of  his  commit- 
tee, in  the  existing  conditions  of  things  he  would  not  only 
have  charge  of  all  Territorial  legislation,  which  of  itself  would 
be  a  noted  achievement  for  the  slave-leaders,  but,  vastly  more 
important  than  that,  such  a  leadership  would  be  almost 
a  victory  in  the  beginning  to  the  bold  and  daring  Atchison, 
who  would  be  prepared  by  such  means  to  control  legislation 
and  all  the  powers  of  Congress  with  him.  He  would  be- 
come a  sort  of  general  in  the  field,  to  force  slavery  into 
the  Territories,  without  care,  regard,  or  pretense  of  honor- 
able methods,  and  hold,  by  means  of  this  committee,  the 
power  of  suppressing,  and  even  the  power  of  manufacturing 
and  destroying  testimony.     He  would  be  enabled  by  this 


494  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

entirely  to  cover  up  the  nefarious  schemes  even  then  in 
operation;  and  if  Douglas  were  removed  from  his  con- 
trolling position,  the  leaders  would  be  sure  to  make  Kansas 
a  slave  State,  with  no  alternative  but  revolt  and  war. 

In  his  party  consideration  of  the  subject,  Douglas  con- 
cluded that  it  would  be  the  most  practicable  method  to  sub- 
mit the  slavery  question  to  the  people  in  the  Territories 
for  settlement,  as  had  been  so  successfully  done  in  Cali- 
fornia. He  was  fully  aware  of  the  overwhelming  pro- 
slavery  sentiment  in  Congress,  and  that  free  institutions 
would  gain  no  advantage  by  any  kind  of  settlement  or  re- 
settlement there,  and  he  had  no  reason  to  believe  there 
would  soon  be  any  important  change. 

He  knew  how  the  Executive  and  the  courts  stood  on 
the  question.  He  knew,  also,  that  if  there  was  any  failure 
of  Congressional  action,  the  plans  were  then  in  operation, 
under  the  direction  of  this  same  Atchison,  to  carry  the  fight 
for  slavery  into  Kansas.  From  all  the  information  he  had  at 
hand — and  there  was  no  lack  of  it — he  fully  believed  that, 
with  the  careful  preparations  the  slave-power  had  made,  the 
fight  for  freedom  would  begin  with  bare  hands  on  the  part 
of  the  free  settlers  on  the  plains,  and,  no  difference  how  it 
began,  he  had  the  confidence  so  many  lacked,  that  they  would 
win  if  they  could  have  a  fair  fight.  To  that  end,  and  to 
avert  civil  war,  if  possible,  he  determined  to  make  the 
sacrifice,  bear  the  opprobrium,  whatever  it  might  be,  and 
devote  all  his  energies  to  it. 

He  believed,  however,  that  the  coming  conflict,  as  he 
termed  it,  was  inevitable;  but  its  magnitude  or  result  was 
then  a  mystery  to  him  as  well  as  to  all  who  understood  the 
situation  as  well  as  he  did.  He  often  remarked  through 
those  years  that,  judging  our  condition  by  what  had  hap- 
pened to  other  peoples  similarly  situated,  war  could  scarcely 
be  avoided;  and  there  was  so  much  proof  and  forecast  of  it 
to  him  in  1854  that  it  appeared  a  certainty. 


CHAPTER  XXII. 

AT  the  expiration  of  the  time  mentioned — one  day — 
Douglas   informed   Atchison   that  he  would   introduce 

■  an  amendment  in  the  Senate  to  the  pending  Kansas- 
Nehraska  Bill,  and  that  Mr.  Richardson,  of  Illinois,  would 
also  introduce  a  similar  one  in  the  House,  to  repeal  the 
Missouri  Compromise  in  the  form  heretofore  given,  Doug- 
las also  conferred  with  Senator  Dixon,  who  readily  con- 
sented to  the  Douglas  form  of  the  repeal,  giving  plausible 
reasons  for  the  repeal  in  what  was  done  in  the  compromises 
of  1850.  It  must  he  distinctly  stated  that  the  pending 
proposed  amendment  of  Dixon,  which  all  knew  would  pass 
the  Senate,  was  a  simple,  unqualified  repeal  of  the  act  or 
clause  of  it  known  as  the  Missouri  Compromise  of  1830, 
which  gave  the  people  of  the  Territory  no  authority  to 
vote  for  or  against  slavery. 

Instead  of  this  the  Douglas  repeal  asserted  the  right  of 
the  people  of  the  Territories  to  settle  and  determine  whether 
slavery  should  exist  in  them.  If  Atchison  had  succeeded 
Douglas,  his  plan  would  have  been  the  same  as  Dixon's. 
It  will  be  seen  on  investigation  that  there  was  a  world  of 
difference.  The  pro-slavery  plan  fastened  slavery  in  the 
Territories  to  begin  with,  while  under  Douglas's  plan  it 
could  never  be  established  without  a  fair  election  and  a 
majority  of  the  qualified  voters  in  its  favor.  In  this  dif- 
ference lay  the  contest,  which  was  transferred  from  Con- 
gress to  the  people,  and  fought  out  to  its  bloody  ending. 

As  we  have  related,  Douglas  encountered  no  end  of 
denunciation  and  personal  abuse  from  the  people  of  the 

495 


496  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

free  States,  while  he  was  the  most  dreaded  leader  in  the 
estimation  of  the  pro-slavery  faction  of  his  party.  Jefferson 
Davis,  in  his  ''Kise  and  Fall,"  says  that  "On  a  Sunday — 
January  22,  1854 — the  House  and  Senate  Territorial  Com- 
mittees called  on  President  Pierce,  to  get  his  approval  of 
the  repeal  of  the  Missouri  Compromise.  They  called  on 
that  day  because  of  the  urgency  demanded,  and  the  Presi- 
dent gave  it  his  immediate  approval."  All  of  this  was  true, 
but  it  was  a  mere  formality  compared  with  the  stress  of 
existing  things  as  we  have  related,  it  was  the  only  and 
last  resort  of  the  slave-leaders  to  extend  their  slavery  in- 
stitution into  the  new  territories  short  of  war,  and  with- 
out which  they  believed  their  slavery-system  would  perish. 
The  act  must  be  rushed  through  Congress  before  there  was 
time  to  organize  opposition  against  it.  Therefore,  as  Davis 
says,  "It  was  attended  to  on  a  Sunday." 

That  this  was  the  real  course  is  sustained  in  the  occur- 
rence of  the  political  and  public  events  of  the  time.  The 
knowledge  of  the  relation  of  Judge  Douglas  to  these  events 
and  his  action  came  mostly  through  the  pleasant  friendly 
relations  referred  to,  and  were  not  biased  in  his  favor  in 
any  way  by  political  affiliations,  for  there  were  none.  Mmmo 
Browne  and  the  writer  were  unqualified  Abolitionists  from 
the  beginning,  which  Judge  Douglas  very  well  knew,  though 
our  friendly  relations  enabled  us  to  estimate  the  sterling 
quailties  of  the  man  and  the  reasons  for  his  political  course, 
which  we  have  related. 

The  writer  was  in  college  in  Chicago  in  the  fall  of  1854, 
when  Judge  Douglas  was  prevented  by  a  riotous  mob  from 
speaking.  The  lights  were  turned  off,  seats  were  demol- 
ished, men  were  howling  all  over  the  hall,  and  general  dis- 
order prevailed.  One  hundred  of  us  students,  mainly  from 
the  smaller  towns,  armed  with  nothing  but  canes  and  sticks, 
offered  our  services  to  assist  the  police  in  subduing  the  dis- 
turbance, which  we  believed  could  be  easily  done,  and  order 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  497 

preserved,  while  Judge  Douglas  explained  his  action  in  the 
Senate  and  his  beliefs,  which  we  were  very  anxious  to  hear. 
To  our  surprise  the  police  declined  our  help,  informing  us 
that  our  interference  would  increase  the  trouble;  and  in 
this  way  they  let  the  uproar  continue  until  the  meeting  was 
abandoned  and  free  speech  was  for  this  time  suppressed  in 
Illinois.  We  left  the  hall  fully  believing  that  the  police  were 
the  chief  disturbers. 

In  our  talks  with  Mr.  Douglas  about  it,  he  said  that  he 
knew  very  well  that  he  was  to  be  made  the  victim  of  the 
excitement  then  prevailing.  The  feeling  was  somewhat 
changed  in  a  few  weeks,  when  we  heard  a  Chicago  audience 
listen  in  the  same  hall  to  the  defense  of  the  Kansas-ISTebraska 
Act  by  General  Cass,  who  voted  for  it  in  the  Senate  with 
Douglas,  who  was  then  with  him  on  the  platform.  There 
were  calls  for  Douglas,  and  our  students'  brigade,  with  others, 
were  present,  offering  to  help  the  police  in  a  more  effectual 
way  than  before,  but  they  would  not  suppress  the  rioters 
nor  attempt  to  do  so.  They  were  no  more  than  noisy  and 
threatening  on  that  occasion,  and  Douglas  might  have  been 
listened  to,  but  he  prudently  determined  not  to  have  a 
struggle  to  speak  in  his  own  State,  and  retired. 

However,  he  addressed  large  meetings  all  over  the  State, 
and  spoke  to  orderly  crowds  of  all  political  parties  during 
that  and  the  next  year.  Late  in  1855,  perhaps,  Chicago  was 
shamed  into  some  kind  of  suppression  of  its  riot-breeding 
police,  and  Douglas  had  meetings  in  and  about  the  city 
without  disturbance  of  any  kind.  He  went  through  the 
period  of  his  denunciation  with  the  true  courage  and  forti- 
tude of  a  man  who  believed  he  was  right.  He  was  written 
down  and  denounced  so  generally  and  unmercifully  that, 
if  his  detractors  had  been  correct,  he  would  not  have  had 
a  friend  left  in  the  State;  yet  when  he  held  his  memorable 
debate,  and  made  the  celebrated  campaign  against  as  good 
and  righteous  a  man  as  Lincoln,  with  all  the  influence  and 
32 


498  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

patronage  of  Buchanan's  Administration  against  him,  it 
was  found  that  the  State  was  very  evenly  divided  between 
these  two  great  leaders. 

This,  it  would  seem,  should  have  calmed  the  violent 
personal  and  newspaper  abuse,  which  it  did  to  some  ex- 
tent; but  there  were  many  after  that  who  claimed  he  had 
made  undue  concessions  to  slaver}',  and  was  bending  his 
course  to  secure  the  political  favor  of  the  South. 

The  worst  and  most  angry  denunciations  were  made  by 
leaders  and  editor's  who  had  very  recently  and  very  ear- 
nestly supported  either  Clay,  Webster,  Fillmore,  and  Scott, 
or  Pierce  and  Cass,  and  others,  who  had  regularly  conceded 
all  the  South  had  ever  asked  of  them.  No  one  questioned 
their  right  to  do  this,  but,  having  done  it  so  recently  and 
earnestly,  it  was  one  of  the  strange  political  conditions  in 
the  upheaval  that  those  who  had  most  of  their  lives  been 
heartily  supporting  the  most  zealous  conceders  to  the  South 
were  now  engaged  in  pouring  out  their  wrath  on  Douglas. 
And  yet  Douglas  was  the  first  eminent  leader  in  the  par- 
ties of  his  time  who  would  not  make  concessions  to  the 
slavery-leaders — the  one  man  of  all  the  great  leaders  in 
the  old  parties  who  held  his  independence,  and  would  not 
submit  to  the  dictation  of  Calhoun  and  Davis,  not  even 
to  be  President,  as  he  easily  could  have  become  in  1852. 

In  1849  our  family  settled  on  a  farm  in  McLean  County, 
111.,  some  sixteen  miles  from  Blooraington.  We  were  led 
to  this  settlement  because  our  grandfather,  John  Steven, 
a  Scotch  deacon  from  near  Glasgow,  as  faithful,  deliberate, 
and  solemn  as  John  Knox  himself,  lived  there.  He  was 
a  devout  man,  and  well  reputed  among  his  neighbors.  He 
could  repeat  the  catechisms,  a  great  many  of  the  Psalms, 
and  much  of  the  Scripture,  and  knew  the  Thirty-nine 
Articles,  line  for  line,  from  beginning  to  end.  He  was  so 
kind  and  gentle  and  considerate,  even  with  his  animals, 
that,  of  some  thirty  horses,  all  except  one  or  two  would 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  499 

crowd  around  him  whenever  he  went  among  them  in  his 
pastures  or  feed-lots;  and  the  rabbits  and  birds  made  a 
habit  of  feeding  with  his  animals,  and  were  never  dis- 
turbed. He  said  of  Lincoln:  "Indeed  that  gaunt-lookin' 
mon,  wi'  his  touzled  hair  an'  een,  that  would  rack  ye  if  ye 
were  nae  aye  free  o'  the  bailiff,  is  a  real  guid  body  after  a'. 
He  's  been  hame  wi'  me,  an'  likes  buttermilk  an'  oatcakes 
like  a  king,  I  '11  nae  be  advisin'  ye,  but  I  '11  vouch  ye  that 
he  wud  be  an  honest  mon  in  a  judge's  gown,  an'  't  would 
mak'  a  draper  an'  his  tailor  blythe;  for  'twould  be  as  long 
as  any  twa  of  them  in  a'  Dumbarton." 

The  writer,  then  an  ambitious  lad  of  fifteen  years,  soon 
learned  that,  between  crops  and  cattle-raising  and  the  odds 
and  shorts  of  hard  work  of  miscellaneous  kinds,  he  would 
have  to  get  all  his  education  that  was  not  worked  out  at 
home  in  the  county  town  of  Bloomington.  Several  visits 
were  made  there.  It  was  found  that  the  Munsells — three 
of  them,  all  Methodist  preachers — and  Dr.  Goodfellow,  as 
good  as  his  name  indicated,  were  going  to  start  a  college, 
and  as  soon  as  the  country  filled  up  a  little  more  and  they 
got  enough  students,  they  would  make  it  a  university. 

Grandfather  Steven  believed  that  it  was  Just  the  thing 
"for  a  lad  that  needed  something  in  his  noggin',  as  weel 
as  claes  on  his  back."  He  knew  Judge  David  Davis  "as  weel 
as  he  knew  on'y  one  in  a'  the  country  round."  He  "thocht 
the  college  was  as  guid  as  they  could  mak'  it.  The  teach- 
ers were  a'  puir-minded.  Judge  David  Davis  tould  me  he 
would  do  a'  in  his  power,  an'  see  a  bit  about  it  now  an' 
then,  an'  to  send  the  lad  along."  In  this  way  the  writer 
entered  the  colleges,  universities,  and  society  of  Blooming- 
ton,  and  started  on  his  way  to  something  of  an  education. 

This  was  in  the  days  when  Mr.  Lincoln  was  attending 
the  court  terms  of  McLean  County  as  regularly  as  any  one 
of  the  Bloomington  bar,  and  was  often  there  during  the 
intervals.     In  addition  to  the  good  will  and  oversight  of 


600  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

Judge  Davis  that  the  writer  began  with,  he  soon  made  the 
favorable  acquaintance  of  Mr.  Asahel  Gridley,  and  became 
office  boy,  student,  and  general  attache  of  the  Gridley- 
Davis  office  and  bank  for  several  years.  This  was  of  in- 
calculable benefit  to  any  student,  affording,  at  the  same 
time,  the  great  opportunity  of  a  near  acquaintance  and  close 
friendship  with  Mr.  Lincoln  through  the  years  of  his  won- 
derful rise  and  development. 

Mr.  Gridley's  introduction  of  the  somewhat  backward 
boy — the  writer — to  Mr.  Lincoln  was  characteristic;  and 
in  those  days  it  was  a  noted  circumstance  in  any  boy's  life 
to  be  made  a  near  acquaintance  and  be  as  favorably  intro- 
duced to  prominent  lawyers,  who  were  persons  of  much 
distinction  to  country  boys.  Our  family  had  known  Mr. 
Lincoln  only  a  few  years  before,  tolerably  well,  as  we  have 
related,  but  nothing  like  so  intimately  as  we  did  Judge 
Douglas.  Hence,  to  meet  Mr.  Lincoln  in  such  favorable 
circumstances  as  Mr.  Gridley  had  arranged  for  was  a  no- 
table, almost  exciting,  event. 

When  the  time  arrived,  Mr.  Lincoln  walked  into  the 
office — a  tall,  mild-mannered,  friendly-looking  man,  with 
the  most  comfortable  and  easy  manner  about  him  in  his 
address  and  presence  you  could  well  imagine.  Mr.  Gridley 
met  him,  shook  hands  with  him  cordially,  and,  after  some 
personal  remarks,  said,  in  his  rapid,  clear  voice,  his  words 
rattling  like  hailstones  on  a  tin  roof:  "Mr.  Lincoln,  I  am 
very  glad  to  have  you  here  with  us  again.  I  have  made 
some  changes.  This  will  be  your  desk,  and  the  tables  you 
can  arrange  as  you  like.  This  young  man,  Eobert,  will 
render  you  any  assistance  he  can.  He  is  here  attending 
school.  His  people  live  in  the  country.  He  has  been  thinking 
about  things  for  himself,  and  stirring  them  up  very  lively 
in  some  quarters,  and,  as  I  have  advised  him,  he  has  been 
more  cautious  recently;  but  in  spite  of  it  he  insists  that 
he  is  an  out-and-out  Abolitionist,  without  evasion  or  any 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  501 

sort  of  qualification.  I  have  told  him  that  he  was  very 
foolish,  and  that,  if  he  was  a  little  older,  it  would  bring 
him  a  lot  of  trouble.  Anyway,  with  all  my  care  and  pru- 
dence, he  is  a  long  way  ahead  of  public  sentiment." 

Mr.  Lincoln  took  my  hand  with  a  warmth  and  expres- 
sion that  lightened  up  the  soul  of  any  one  whom  he  re- 
spected or  held  to  be  a  friend,  saying:  "Yes,  Mr.  Gridley, 
I  will  get  along  first  rate.  This  will  all  suit  me  very  well;" 
and,  turning  to  me:  "The  young  man  will  do  as  well  as  the 
rest  of  lis;  but  he  must  not  be  kept  out  of  school  an  hour 
on  my  account.  It  seems  to  me,  Eobert,  that  I  ought  to 
know  you;  but,  then,  you  never  know  about  boys  of  your 
age,  who  change  every  year,  and  grow  out  of  your  knowl- 
edge." I  replied:  "Mr.  Lincoln,  I  know  who  you  are  very 
well.  My  father  knew  you  when  we  lived  in  Springfield, 
when  he  helped  to  finish  the  south  front  and  the  top 
work  of  the  Capitol  building."  "Yes,  yes,  I  knew  Mr. 
Browne,  the  Scotchman.  I  remember  him  quite  well.  Of 
course,  you  are  an  Abolitionist."  When  this  was  done, 
the  friendly  relation  of  a  lifetime  had  begun. 

Mr.  Lincoln  continued:  "I  was  sorry  to  learn  of  your 
father's  death.  He  was  a  strong,  independent  man,  full 
of  positive  ideas,  with  the  capacity  and  education  to  de- 
fend them.  He  was  the  best-informed  man  on  the  British 
emancipation  of  slavery  whom  I  ever  met.  I  was  always 
pleased  and  benefited  by  the  chats  I  had  with  him.  I 
heard  that  he  contended  vigorously  with  Judge  Douglas, 
who  was  his  warm  friend,  and  I  never  had  a  doubt  that 
Browne  kept  up  his  side  of  the  question;  for  he  was  a  fear- 
less man  in  the  expression  of  his  anti-slavery  beliefs,  so 
much  so  that  many  feared  he  might  get  into  some  personal 
difficulty.  So,  Robert,  we  will  be  good  friends;  but  you 
are  not  to  remain  out  of  school  on  my  account.  Are  you 
opposed  to  slavery  from  anything  you  know  about  it  your- 
self, or  is  it  because  of  your  father's  opinions?"     Here, 


502  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

Mr.  Gridley  rose  to  retire,  saying,  "I  must  go."  As  he 
was  retiring,  he  said:  "1  see,  Mr.  Lincoln,  that  you  are 
taking  more  and  more  interest  in  this  slavery  question. 
Beware,  and  not  go  too  far.  The  Whigs  from  the  border 
slave  States  are  going  over  to  Douglas  by  the  thousand. 
If  you  should  take  up  the  Free  Soil  cause,  which  is  right 
in  the  abstract,  there  will  not  be  Whigs  enough  left  in 
McLean  County  to  make  a  committee." 

Mr.  Lincoln  replied:  "Mr.  Gridley,  what  do  you  think 
of  the  situation,  aside  from  expediency,  which  seems  to 
be  the  main  consideration  in  treating  the  slave  question 
these   days?" 

Mr.  Gridley  answered:  "When  our  people  teach  and 
defend  free-labor  systems  and  their  benefits  as  zealously 
and  faithfully  as  the  South  has  its  slave-system  for 
two  or  three  generations,  the  free  State  people  will  all 
be  Abolitionists;  or  the  South  may  provoke  a  rupture, 
as  they  would  have  done  in  1820,  and  divide  the  N^ation, 
as  they  threaten  all  the  time  when  they  fear  the  passing 
of  their  control.  They  would  have  done  so  then  had  it 
not  been  for  Mr.  Clay's  wonderful  persuasive  powers  and 
the  co-operation  of  Jackson  and  Benton,  who  held  the 
Democrats  so  well  in  line.  There  would  be  a  conflict  run- 
ning high  within  a  few  months  if  it  were  not  for  the  strong, 
conservative  feeling  and  conduct  of  our  merchants,  manu- 
facturers, and  their  agencies,  who  do  not  want  to  lose  the 
trade,  or  offend  a  single  slaveholder.  Much  as  has  been 
said  of  the  shiftiness,  flopping  over,  and  turning  out  and 
in  of  the  politicians,  which  many  of  them  make  a  common 
habit,  slavery  has  had  the  best  support  and  the  protection 
that  has  saved  it  for  over  two  generations  from  the  mer- 
chants and  commercial  people,  whose  principles  are  guided 
by  their  interests. 

"The  times  are  critical,  Mr.  Lincoln,"  continued  Grid- 
ley.    "You  know  more  about  these  things  than  I  do.    You 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  503 

are  in  politics,  and  I  am  out.  However,  I  see  what  I  see. 
Seward  and  Weed  are  long-headed,  calculating  men,  I 
knew  them  well  when  I  was  younger.  You  may  be  sure 
that  both  of  them — Seward  particularly — have  taken  the 
deepest  soundings  they  could  before  venturing  to  be  as 
strong  anti-slavery  as  I  understand  Seward  has  lately 
done,  taking  public  position  against  the  enforcement  of 
the  Fugitive-slave  Law  or  the  admission  of  another  slave 
State.  This  is  bold  work  indeed  for  as  timid  a  man  as 
I  always  believed  him  to  be.  He  can  easily  have  a  following 
in  New  York,  however,  as  strong  as  Van  Buren's  was  in 
1848,  or  more — enough,  anyway,  to  turn  the  State  to  any 
party  he  desires  if  his  Free  Soilers  can  not  carry  it.  He 
and  Weed  have  declared  openly  that  they  will  not  sup- 
port Fillmore,  nor  any  one  else  seeking  Southern  support 
in  slavery  compromises." 

This  was  about  1851,  before  the  Presidential  election 
of  1852.  As  Mr.  Gridley  left  us,  Mr.  Lincoln  said:  "Mr. 
Gridley  is  a  marvelous  man.  His  perceptions  are  so  bright 
that  he  has  everything  at  hand,  and  a  memory  that  never 
fails  him.  If  he  should  change  his  intentions,  he  would, 
as  his  conversation  we  have  now  heard  indicates,  be  able 
to  take  up  public  affairs  with  as  much  care  and  ability  as 
he  now  exercises  in  business  affairs,  which  is  far  ahead 
of  any  man  I  know  in  this  part  of  the  country,  and,  I  be- 
lieve, a  great  deal  more  than  most  of  our  people  realize." 

One  evening,  as  I  sat  and  talked  with  him  in  the  office, 
in  order  to  answer  his  question  as  to  what  was  the  ground- 
work of  my  belief  on  slavery,  I  told  him  what  I  knew  and 
had  seen  of  it  in  the  mild  slaveholding  city  of  St.  Louis, 
and  what  my  father  knew  about  it  for  several  years.  My 
father  was  an  assistant  engineer,  engaged  in  and  about  the 
city,  its  public  buildings,  court-houses,  wharves,  and  the 
drainage  system.  He  was  employed,  not  elected  to  any 
office,  and  was,  therefore,  soon  on  good   terms  with  the 


504  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

city  and  county  officials.  In  this  way  he  had  access  to 
the  slave-pens,  the  public  and  private  auctions,  wherever 
slaves  were  dealt  in  and  sold,  and  I  was  with  him  and 
saw  the  horrors  of  all  these  slave-dens. 

The  officers  liked  my  father  personally.  His  manner 
was  so  easy  and  plain  that  they  permitted  him  to  say  what- 
ever he  liked,  and  would,  as  he  believed,  have  protected 
him.  There  were,  too^  in  the  city  many  anti-slavery  peo- 
ple, who  seemed  more  at  liberty  in  denouncing  and  oppos- 
ing slavery  than  the  people  are  here.  These  would  have 
sustained  him,  as  he  knew  them  well.  I  remember  hear- 
ing Mr.  Benton  say,  in  a  speech  on  the  front  steps  of  the 
court-house,  that  unskilled  slave-labor  would  soon  exhaust 
the  best  lands  in  continuous  crops  of  tobacco,  hemp,  and 
corn,  and  that,  while  he  believed  the  slave-system  should 
be  gradually  changed  to  free  labor,  he  further  believed 
that  Missouri  would  never  have  the  prosperity  under  slave- 
labor  which  its  abundant  resources  and  fertile  lands  in- 
vited, and  that  a  State  with  its  means  of  living  and  navi- 
gation could  not  be  surpassed  when  it  was  opened  to  free 
labor,  and  its  slave-system  abolished,  as  it  should  be. 

We  saw  slave  sales  almost  every  week.  They  were  so 
common  that  our  senses  became  blunted;  and  it  was  only 
when  some  unusual  distress  was  occasioned  by  separation 
of  family  or  friends  that  there  was  much  said  of  them. 
All  those  made  by  the  sheriff  were  made  on  the  east  front 
portico,  or  steps,  of  the  court-house.  Negroes  belonging 
to  estates  were  usually  sold  there.  This  was  the  most 
respectable  auction-block  in  the  city,  if  any  man-market 
could  be  so;  at  least  it  was  so  held  to  be.  But  even  there 
the  men,  women,  and  children  were  examined,  stripped, 
and  undressed  as  requested,  and  compared  in  a  more  aban- 
doned and  coarser  way,  and  jibed  over  by  more  vulgar 
tongues  than  animals  in  the  stock-pens. 

Several  times  we  saw  heartrending  separations.     One 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  505 

was  a  Negro  woman  to  a  Louisiana  planter,  who  would  not 
buy  her  nursing  child,  less  than  two  years  old.  Families 
were  divided,  sold,  and  separated  so  often  that  the  cries 
and  lamentations  of  some  such  wretched  scene  were  con- 
stantly in  our  minds.  Browne's  work  took  him  about  the 
court-house  almost  every  da}^  in  some  work  or  business,  or 
we  would  not  have  seen  so  much  of  the  distress  of  slave- 
selling  and  separating.  He  denounced  the  whole  system 
openly  many  times;  but,  seeing  it  was  useless,  and  per- 
haps angering  those  who  were  in  the  dastard  work  to  more 
cruel  conduct,  he  gave  it  up.  I  was  with  him  much  of 
the  time  for  months  and  years  in  his  errands,  work  about 
the  court-house  and  other  parts  of  the  city,  and  saw  all 
there  was  of  the  vileness  of  slave-selling,  separations,  and 
the  slave-dens  and  auction-blocks  when  a  boy  from  ten 
to  fifteen  years  of  age.  The  oflicers  protected  Browne 
several  times,  as  I  remember,  when  he  angered  the  buyers 
and  traders  who  were  so  roughly  and  brutally  handling  the 
poor,  scared,  and  terrified  women  and  children  that  were 
on  the  way  to  a  fate  they  dreaded  worse  than  death. 

I  talked  an  hour,  with  frequent  questions  interspersed 
by  Mr.  Lincoln,  who  was  deeply  interested  in  every  fact 
and  feature  of  this  slavery  business  in  the  city  of  St.  Louis, 
as  we  saw  and  understood  it  for  so  many  years.  When  I 
had  finished,  he  was  in  deep  and  profound  study,  and  I 
thought  perhaps  he  had  fallen  asleep.  I  said,  in  the  usual 
way,  not  louder  than  ordinary  conversation,  ''Mr.  Lincoln, 
do  you  wonder  that  my  father  and  myself  were  Abolition- 
ists, or  do  you  doubt  our  sincerity?"  This  disclosed  that 
he  had  not  been  asleep,  but  in  deep  thought.  He  sat  firm, 
with  not  so  much  as  a  muscle  of  his  face  relaxed,  as  he 
had  done  through  much  of  my  recital.  His  face  and  its 
firm,  drawn  expression  was  like  one  in  pain.  He  made 
a  motion  of  some  kind  with  his  arm  or  head,  and  broke 
the   strain,  which,   I   remember,   relieved   me   very   much. 


506  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

He  drew  out  a  sighing  "No.  I  saw  it  all  myself  when  I 
was  only  a  little  older  than  you  are  now,  and  the  horrid 
pictures  are  in  my  mind  yet.  I  feel  drawn  toward  you 
because  you  have  seen  and  know  the  truth  of  such  sor- 
row. No  wonder  that  your  father  told  Judge  Douglas  he 
had  nothing  but  contempt  for  party  platforms  or  techni- 
calities that  held  and  bound  a  free  man  in  a  free  State, 
directly  or  remotely,  to  sustain  a  system  of  such  unquali- 
fied cruelties  and  horrors.  When  Mr.  Gridley  mentioned 
it  to  me,  I  supposed  your  Abolitionism  was  only  a  boy's 
sentiment  perhaps;  but  the  knowledge  you  have  demon- 
strates and  makes  it  very  plain  to  me  that  your  father, 
educated  as  he  was,  and  seeing  what  he  did  of  slavery 
so  well,  could  not  have  been  anything  but  an  Abolitionist; 
and  your  experience,  though  young,  is  as  full  justification." 

Our  acquaintance  grew  to  regard  and  friendship  that 
could  not  be  measured  or  expressed.  The  busy,  hard-work- 
ing man  was  never  too  much  engaged  during  the  day  that 
he  did  not  enjoy  reading  with  me  and  helping  along  with 
all  my  studies  in  the  evenings,  when  we  were  so  often 
alone  in  the  old  law  office.  Along  with  many  a  hard  les- 
son or  reading,  or  examples  in  arithmetic  and  algebra, 
while  Mr.  Lincoln  laid  no  claim  to  being  a  lettered  man 
or  a  teacher,  yet,  in  going  over  these  with  him,  his  ex- 
planation of  any  of  their  intricacies  was  the  clearest  and 
the  plainest  I  ever  got.  This  was  in  a  school  where  we 
had  the  best  of  teachers,  and,  having  time,  they  made  full 
explanations  to  us  as  pupils  whenever  desired. 

In  a  conversation,  one  evening,  Mr.  Lincoln  asked  me, 
"Did  your  father  express  the  belief  that  Douglas  could  be 
as  free  to  express  and  carry  into  effect  his  anti-slavery 
beliefs  while  a  senator,  as  Browne  could  as  a  citizen?" 
I  ansAvered:  "I  remember  Douglas  saying,  'The  officers 
of  the  Government,  from  President  to  senators,  representa- 
tives, and  judges,  are  so  hemmed  in  by  agreements,  Con- 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  507 

stitutional  restrictions  and  precedents,  that,  regardless  of 
what  their  individual  opinions  may  be,  what  they  say  and 
do  must  be  within  the  limits  of  these  laws  and  settle- 
ments.' To  this  Browne  replied:  'If  you  will  do  all  that 
you  can  within  these  limits,  it  will  be  all  that  is  neces- 
sary now;  and  soon  you  will  put  slavery  in  the  course  of 
extinction.  I  am  aware  that  public  officers  are  limited 
by  law  and  the  recognized  course  of  procedure,  and  that 
reform  measures  under  consideration  must  harmonize  with 
the  same.  They  should  submit  to  law,  regardless  of  what 
their  personal  opinions  may  be.' 

"'What  can  we  do?'  Douglas  asked.  Browne  answered: 
*Enact  some  plain,  simple  statutes  in  harmony  with  your 
fundamental  declaration,  which  is  now  so  openly  violated, 
"That  all  men  are  created  free  and  equal,  and  that  they 
are  endowed  by  their  Creator  with  certain  inalienable 
rights,  among  which  are  life,  liberty,  and  the  pursuit  of 
happiness."  For  instance,  enact  one  to  prohibit  slavery 
in  the  District  of  Columbia,  or  in  any  Territory  or  juris- 
diction not  in  a  slave  State;  another,  that  no  officer  or 
other  person  serving  in  the  army  or  navy  of  the  United 
States  shall  own,  deal  in,  or  sell  slaves;  and  the  last  I 
have  to  suggest  now  would  be  an  act  to  prohibit  all  com- 
merce in  the  buying  or  selling  of  men  and  women  between 
the  States,  over  which  Congress  has  jurisdiction,  as  it 
has  over  all  other  commerce.' 

"Douglas  seemed  amazed,  replying:  'Why,  my  friend, 
if  I  should  do  even  a  part  of  what  you  mention,  as  I  look 
at  existing  conditions  in  our  country,  I  would  be  regarded 
fanatical  at  once.  Whatever  influence  I  might  expect  to 
exercise  now  would  be  lost,  and  I  would  be  as  helpless  to 
bring  about  any  reform  or  amelioration  of  slavery  as  you 
are  here  to-day.' 

"Browne  rejoined:  'What  you  say  may  be  true,  or  you 
may  be  altogether  mistaken.     I  know  that  the  conditions 


508  ABBAHAM  LINCOLN. 

are  different  from  the  abolition  movement  in  Britain, 
but  they  are  nevertheless  enough  alike  to  establish  prece- 
dents and  draw  conclusions  from.  The  same  browbeat- 
ing, coarse-mannered  objections  to  emancipation  there  were 
used  for  over  thirty  years.  There  was  more  peaceful  and 
logical,  and  less  violent,  discussion  of  the  system;  but  the 
movers  of  it  in  the  beginning  were  called  addle-pated, 
visionary  reformers,  who  had  neither  legal  nor  practical 
knowledge  of  the  labor-systems  they  were  attempting  to 
revolutionize.  But  they  had  the  virtue  of  perseverance, 
and  continued  their  noble,  praiseworthy  labors  until  they 
succeeded.  This  unliinching  kind  of  a  campaign  is  just 
what  3^ou  need  in  this  country,  and  must  eventually  under- 
take— an  unselfish,  patient,  reproof-bearing  devotion  to  the 
work,  until  the  great  turn  in  humanity  is  accomplished. 
TThen  done  here,  it  will  be,  as  it  is  now  in  Britain  and  all 
her  Colonies:  it  will  be  acknowledged  to  be  an  achieve- 
ment of  good  so  manifest  and,  withal,  so  profitable,  that 
no  one  in  all  the  colonies  ever  expects  to  see  or  hear  of 
slavery  again  in  any  of  them.  Much  as  you  object  to  what 
your  questions  have  invited,  should  you  live  out  your  days, 
you  will  perhaps  see  the  time  when  you  will  be  demanding 
all  these  laws  against  slavery,  and,  perhaps,  the  more  di- 
rect law  for  its  extinction.  You  do  not  seem  to  realize 
that  your  slaveholders  have  taken  up  arms  for  its  exten- 
sion, nor  that  men  who  will  contend  with  arms  for  so  un- 
righteous a  system  as  slavery  will  not  haggle  long  about 
who  are  their  contestants,  but  will  strike  down  all  alike 
in  their  pathway.  Such  has  been  the  history  of  every 
usurpation.  Your  antagonists  will  destroy  your  system 
of  free  labor  if  you  do  not  destroy  their  slave-system.'  In 
this  discussion  Douglas  and  Browne  contended  until  it  was 
very  late,  leaving  it  about  as  they  began." 

Mr.  Lincoln  was  thoughtful,  and  observed  every  word 
of  what  I  said.    The  acquaintance  thus  begun  with  him  was 


TEE  MEX  OF  HIS  TIME.  509 

developed,  strengthened,  and  continued.  It  became  a  per- 
petual pleasure.  It  was  an  open,  cheerful,  good-willed 
friendship,  that  was  never  cramped  nor  strained.  I  was 
intimate  with  him  in  this  office  intercourse  something  over 
three  years,  and  had  a  continued  friendly  relation  that  was 
never  broken  or  impaired  up  to  1860. 

His  habits  were  so  simple,  so  plain,  and  his  personal 
wants  so  few,  that  he  never  had  a  wish  to  be  served,  as 
I  was  very  anxious  to  do.  He  was  not  given  to  much  writ- 
ing. His  letters  were  short,  distinct,  emphatic,  and  very 
much  to  the  purpose.  His  entire  record  of  many  of  his 
most  important  suits  in  court  were  kept  upon  the  memoran- 
dums which  he  made  on  narrow  slips  of  paper,  marked 
"Memorandum  Slips,"'  giving  the  suit  and  date  at  the  top. 
These  memoranda  he  kept  along  with  letters  further  ex- 
plaining the  cases,  in  the  large  side-pockets  of  his  loose- 
hanging  coat  and  in  the  top  of  his  capacious  silk  hat,  which, 
though  usually  a  well-worn  one,  was  respectable,  with  the 
fur  ruffled  up,  and  half  of  it  turned  the  wrong  way.  His 
hats  were  all  good  ones  to  begin  with.  They  were  gener- 
ally made  for  him,  and  when  one  was  '"iDroken  in,"  he  wore 
it  as  long  as  he  could,  for  one  reason,  that  he  would  rather 
wear  an  old  hat  than  undergo  the  discomfort  of  ''"'breaking 
in"  a  new  one. 

He  was  quite  careless  about  his  dress — that  is,  about 
replenishing  it — and  seemed  never  to  realize  the  time  when 
he  needed  a  new  suit  of  clothes,  and,  as  far  as  we  could 
see,  he  gave  the  matter  very  little  attention.  He  wore 
good  clothes,  and  was  never  slouchy  in  appearance  or  dress; 
but,  seeing  how  careless  he  was  about  his  attire  and  replen- 
ishing it,  we  came  to  the  conclusion  that  this  matter  was 
well  attended  to  by  his  more  prudent  wife  and  his  Spring- 
field tailor,  who  served  him  faithfully  for  years,  and  made 
him  a  new  suit  of  clothes  whenever  he  saw  that  Mr.  Lin- 
coln needed  them. 


510  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

He  was  careful  so  far  about  his  dress  that  his  garments 
were  always  plain,  of  dark  color,  roomy,  and  made  to  be 
easy  and  comfortable.  It  was  often  joked  over  about  the 
courts  that  "Lincoln  carried  his  library  in  his  hat."  To 
many  who  did  not  know  him  well  this  had  little,  if  any, 
meaning;  but  to  those  who  did  know  him  there  was  much 
truth  in  the  pleasantry.  He  carried  a  lot  of  memoranda 
about  his  law  cases  and  political  addresses,  platforms,  and 
resolutions  on  written  slips  and  printed  ones  in  his  capa- 
cious hat  and  in  his  large  coat-pockets.  He  found  this 
way  of  keeping  his  references  and  smaller  briefs  very  con- 
venient, and  the  best  place  to  have  them,  where  they  were 
always  at  hand. 

His  business  took  him  into  several  counties.  He  was 
often  counsel  on  one  side  or  the  other  of  about  every  case 
on  the  court  docket,  usually  as  associate  counsel.  The 
lawyer  who  was  defending  or  who  brought  the  action,  with 
whom  he  was  associated,  kept  the  complete  and  fully  writ- 
ten-out  records  of  every  case,  which,  of  course,  supplied  any 
lack  in  Lincoln's  memoranda.  It  was  a  marvelous  per- 
formance, quite  often  noticed  in  the  courts  he  attended, 
to  see  him  rise,  take  his  narrow  strip — the  memorandum — 
hang  it  over  his  left  forefinger,  and  proceed  in  his  case, 
with  no  other  reference,  lay  every  detail  of  the  most  com- 
plicated cause  before  a  court  or  jury  so  honestly,  fairly, 
and  completely  that  the  whole  transaction,  from  beginning 
to  end,  was  particularly  related,  without  redundance  or 
omission.  This  was  sometimes  done  so  satisfactorily  that 
it  was  accepted  by  both  sides  as  a  fair  and  impartial  pre- 
sentation of  the  facts. 

Ever  after  our  pleasant  acquaintance  and  association, 
confirmed  by  the  agreeable  conversations  as  they  ran  through 
the  time,  I  never  for  a  moment  doubted  that,  in  the  pend- 
ing revolution  then  approaching  on  the  slavery  issue,  Mr. 
Lincoln  would  be  the  anti-slavery  leader  in  our  State.    We 


II 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  511 

had  anxious  hopes  that  he  would  rise  to  more  than  a  State 
leader,  because  on  the  slavery  division  he  had  no  equal 
in  any  Western  State,  as  we  knew.  It  was  a  time  when 
there  was  a  hundred-fold  more  party  disintegration  than 
growth  or  organization,  when  there  were  none  wise  enough 
to  know  what  would  be  the  future  of  political  or  public 
affairs.    Even  in  that  early  day  we  had  faith  in  Lincoln. 

During  those  days  our  Abolition  section  was  the  most 
aggressive,  and  as  well  the  most  progressive.  We  had  liter- 
ature in  abundance,  and  every  reading  and  thoughtful  per- 
son in  all  our  region  was  supplied.  Our  newspapers  were: 
Garrison's  Liberator,  Horace  Greeley's  New  York  Tribune, 
and  the  National  Era,  of  Washington  City,  as  our  prin- 
cipal ones.  These  we  read  regularly,  and  as  we  learned 
and  grew  steadily  in  our  faith  by  reason  of  the  diabolical 
progress  of  slavery,  we  saw  that  Mr.  Lincoln  was  always 
delighted  with  the  rest  of  us  in  the  clearest  and  strongest 
arraignments  of  the  system. 

Judge  Davis  regularly  denounced  the  Abolitionists 
whenever  the  subject  was  talked  of,  and  was  displeased 
v/hen  it  was  considered  in  or  about  the  ofhce.  Mr.  Grid- 
ley  would  smile,  and  always  take  a  part.  He  would  cut 
off  some  of  the  sharpest  sentences  imaginable,  and  very 
often,  when  the  cutting  seemed  to  rile  Davis  until  he 
would  retire  from  the  discussion.  His  sharp  sentences 
seemed  to  cut  through  the  subject  from  top  to  bottom 
like  a  flashing  blade.  We  give  some  specimens  of  his  talk: 
"Mr.  Lincoln  grows  constantly,  and  will  be  the  leader, 
without  question,  of  all  the  opposing  anti-slavery  forces  in 
the  State  as  soon  as  these  old  Whig  fossils  are  decently 
retired  or  laid  away.  Lincoln  attracts  men  to  him  every 
day,  and  never  seems  to  be  afraid  that  his  party  will  get  too 
big.  Judge  Davis  is  still  apologizing  for  Illinois  being  a 
free  State,  and  talks  as  though  he  would  help  catch  a  run- 
away nigger  any  day." 


612  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

"As  for  Robert  here,  the  young  man  seems  to  be  study- 
ing well  and  reading  enough,  and  never  misses  an  issue 
of  Garrison's  Liberator  or  Greeley's  Tribune.  Though  only 
a  boy,  he  will  be  in  the  camp  of  the  agitators  right  away. 
He  will  soon  be  a  teacher  among  them — is  now,  for  all  I 
know — and  will  be  a  leader  as  soon  as  he  votes.  I,  the  ex- 
citable Gridley,  am  the  most  conservative  person  about  the 
establishment,  and  the  only  one  of  all  of  us  cool-headed 
enough  to  keep  out  of  politics.  The  others  think  they  are, 
while  they  are  all  excited,  not  even  excusing  Mr.  Lincoln; 
and  not  a  line  nor  a  fact  concerning  slavery  and  party 
break-ups  escapes  their  attention,  but  keeps  them  in  a 
state  of  political  agitation  all  the  time.  If  I  did  not  want 
to  do  it,  I  see  that  I  must  remain  cool  enough  to  keep 
them  all  out  of  trouble;  for  they  are  all  more  excitable 
than  I  am,  much  as  I  am  inclined  to  enthusiasm,  as  some- 
times reported,  and  sometimes  when  it  is  the  truth.  I 
verily  believe  that  if  a  runaway  nigger  should  come  along, 
none  of  them  would  have  the  prudence,  the  coolness,  and 
precaution  to  hide  him  away  as  well  as  I  would  myself." 

The  darkest  days  for  freedom  in  our  country,  as  they 
seemed  to  be,  were  in  the  years  following  the  Mexican  War, 
in  1846-47,  to  about  1853.  The  leading  men  and  the  poli- 
ticians, including  the  best-informed  among  them,  fully  be- 
lieved this,  and  a  general  state  of  dread  prevailed  through- 
out the  land.  Although  this  was  the  general  belief,  and 
the  feeling  of  uneasiness  was  general,  the  people  were  slow 
in  taking  up  the  cause  of  freedom,  not  because  they  were 
cowed  down  in  fear  of  slavery,  but  because  of  the  uncer- 
tainty which  hung  over  the  Xation  like  a  cloud  of  dark- 
ness. The  hope  of  the  future  and  the  promise  of  the  great 
struggle  for  freedom  began  in  the  general  desire  to  read  the 
most  reliable  anti-slavery  newspapers,  and  be  informed  on 
the  subject  regardless  of  the  resolutions  of  dying  and  rot- 
ting-out  political  parties. 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  513 

The  Xorthern  people  took  a  firm  resolve  against  the 
fier}'  slave-leaders'  threatened  disunion,  and  against  the 
doubters  and  party  servers  of  the  Northern  States.  The 
newspapers  that  were  the  strongest,  boldest,  and  most  em- 
phatic against  the  aggressions  of  slavery  sold  the  best, 
until  one  or  more  of  them  circulated  in  every  household 
or  neighborhood  of  the  free  and  border  States.  There 
were  many  other  signs  in  those  days  that  the  people  would 
eventually  come  to  the  front  and  stubbornly  resent  the 
encroachments  of  the  slave-power;  but  the  widespread  work 
of  the  propaganda  had  clouded  the  minds  of  so  many  people 
with  subserviency  to  the  system  that  their  emergence  from 
its  thralldom  was  slow.  But  by  1853  thousands  were  in- 
vestigating and  revolutionizing  their  minds  on  the  sub- 
ject every  day.  It  was  a  movement  among  the  loyal 
people  of  the  Nation  of  such  magnitude  that  no  leader 
of  the  time  realized  its  swelling  tide  until  he  went  out 
among  them  and  saw  it  and  became  part  of  it. 

Seward,  like  Chase,  Thaddeus  Stevens,  Giddings,  and 
a  few  other  determined  men,  had  fought  manfully  against 
the  compromises  of  1850,  so  that  when  the  Missouri  Com- 
promise was  repealed  in  1854,  he  voiced  the  heroic  ac- 
ceptance of  the  conflict  on  the  part  of  the  North.  He 
called  the  hosts  of  freedom  to  their  duty  on  that  memorable 
30th  of  May,  when  he  cried:  "Come  on,  then,  gentlemen 
of  the  slave  States!  Since  there  is  no  escaping  your  chal- 
lenge, I  accept  it  in  behalf  of  freedom.  We  will  engage  in 
competition  for  the  virgin  soil  of  Kansas,  and  God  give  the 
victory  to  the  side  that  is  the  strongest  in  numbers  as  it  is 
in  right!" 

Seward  Avent  immediately  into  the  contest  with  all  the 
ability  and  skill  of  a  trained  leader,  and  in  convincing 
reasons  led  the  people  in  multitudes  to  the  active  defense 
of  their  challenged  liberties.  The  storm  gathered  and  burst. 
aMen  were  to  grow  to  leadershi]).  and  gain  the  contidenee 
33 


614  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

of  the  people,  as  some  did;  for  no  others  could  lead  in 
that  or  any  other  such  contest  for  the  rights  of  men. 

It  became  a  marvel  that  two  of  the  great  leaders  in 
this  mighty  struggle  were  men  who  had  grown  to  power 
and  strength  in  Illinois.  They  were  to  rise  and  contend 
with  each  other  as  they  had  done  for  almost  twenty  years; 
but  to  what  end  the}^  knew  not.  When  it  began  they  only 
knew  that  one  was  contending  to  lead  his  part  of  a  great 
party,  that,  in  name  and  belief,  had  been  the  friend  of 
men  wherever  there  was  human  oppression.  Douglas  was 
its  only  Northern  leader  who  had  not  fallen;  but  he  then 
seemed  faltering  and  half  caught  in  the  nets  of  the  slave- 
syren  in  the  mystification  of  "non-interference."  He  and 
Lincoln  were  to  fight  a  mighty  battle,  which  we  must  follow. 
Lincoln  was  to  shape  the  rising  tide  of  the  people  as  God 
led  him,  into  a  new  party.  It  was  composed  of  all  those 
who  had  been  serving,  but  were  then  adverse  to  the  spread 
of  slavery.  There  were  Whigs  in  all  stages  of  discontent 
and  change,  even  to  the  thousands,  who  only  wanted  to 
know  that  it  was  opposed  to  the  Democrats,  and  they  would 
support  it.  There  were  the  Democrats  in  thousands  who 
would  not  follow  their  party  as  far  as  it  had  gone,  and 
furiously  arraigned  those  whom  they  had  just  left.  Be- 
sides these,  there  were  the  Abolitionists,  who  had  been  so 
long  denounced  as  fanatics  and  insurrectionists  that  they 
were  listless  about  the  charges  made  against  them.  Their 
one  aim  was  the  repression  of  the  slave-power  by  confining 
it  to  the  States  where  it  then  existed,  and  its  eventual 
overthrow.  God,  in  his,  wisdom  and  in  the  fullness  of  time, 
was  preparing  Lincoln,  in  mind,  heart,  and  strength,  to  be 
this  party's  and  the  Nation's  leader  by  teaching  him  how 
to  govern  himself. 


CHAPTER  XXIIL 

^I^HE  year  1854  was  a  time  of  political  mix-ups,  dissolv- 
I  ing,  realigning,  proselj'ting,  and  reorganizing  of  par- 
ties. The  work,  aside  from  any  sentiment  or  principle 
involved,  that  came  to  such  leaders  as  Lincoln  and  Doug- 
las, was  a  strain  of  mind  and  expenditure  of  strength  which 
very  few  men  could  have  endured.  They  were  strong,  ca- 
pable men,  whose  energies  were  all  used  in  the  progress 
of  the  work.  There  were  many  old  Whigs,  with  hardly  a 
dozen  of  them  having  the  same  mind.  Many  of  them 
were  older  than  Lincoln,  and  sought  to  overawe  him  by 
reason  of  age,  official  position,  or  their  personal  experience. 
Judge  Davis  was  a  type  of  Whig  conservatism,  and 
ITriah  Linder  was  the  type  of  another  faction  who  had 
to  be  conciliated.  They  were  thoroughly  set  against  any 
man  who  was  a  Democrat  and  any  party  that  had  a  shadow 
of  the  name  Democrat  about  it.  They  had  fought  Demo- 
crats all  their  lives,  and  no  change  was  to  be  expected 
from  men  in  advanced  age,  whose  experience  had  left  them 
more  opinionated  than  ever.  These  were,  if  anything,  more 
pro-slavery  than  the  old  men  of  the  State  who  had  been 
Democrats;  for  the  Illinois  Democracy  had  been  strongly 
pronounced  against  slavery,  and  had  so  resolved  in  its  Con- 
ventions for  years;  whereas  the  Whig  party  of  Illinois  had 
been  fully  content  to  follow  its  compromising  leaders  in 
all  their  concessions.  The  greater  body  of  the  Whigs  came 
from  the  slave  States,  where  they  were  used  to  slavery, 
and  were  firmly  opposed  to  any  interference  with  it  in 
the  States  where  it  existed.  They  had  agreed  to  the  last 
concession  of  1850,  with  its  iniquitous  Fugitive-slave  Law. 

515 


516  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

These  fragments  and  factions  were  gathered  into  the 
new  party,  then  forming  to  oppose  the  extension  of  slav- 
ery into  Kansas.  Lincoln  was,  if  anything,  the  Whig  leader, 
and  the  reader  can  easily  imagine  the  delicacy  of  his 
task  to  get  the  old-line  pro-slavery  Whigs  into  any  kind  of 
an  anti-slavery  party.  He  had  patience,  and  finally  gath- 
ered most  of  them  into  it.  With  the  Whig,  as  well  as 
with  all  other  parties,  it  became  a  regular  work  of  rea- 
soning and  convincing  argument.  It  was  difficult  work, 
continuous  and  laborious,  to  get  all  over  a  great  State  four 
hundred  miles  long  and  two  hundred  miles  across  its  center ; 
but  Lincoln  was  equal  to  all  this,  and  carried  it  on  vigor- 
ously, much  to  the  neglect  of  his  professional  business. 
He  had  large  audiences  of  the  brightest  young  men,  which, 
in  this  feature,  was  a  great  pleasure  to  him. 

These  meetings  often  became  much  more  than  political 
gatherings.  Thousands  of  the  strong  and  intelligent  young 
men  of  the  West  were  started  in  the  course  of  gaining  an 
education,  looking  up  their  country's  history,  and  taking 
to  active  industry  and  to  better  methods  of  living  and 
study.  Thousands  of  them  were  on  the  eve  of  migrating 
into  the  great  Western  Territory.  There  were  many  Demo- 
crats leaving  their  party,  but  there  were  more  leaders  than 
ordinary  members;  hence  their  number  was  greatly  over- 
estimated. There  were  so  many  local  leaders  that  a  sur- 
plus was  developed  in  the  Democratic  party  through  its 
long  years  of  continued  control  of  the  State.  A  great 
many  of  these  joined  the  new,  forming  party,  and  became 
very  turbulent  in  some  instances,  and  atoned  for  their 
service  in  their  own  party  by  soundly  denouncing  Douglas 
as  soon  as  they  left  it. 

Of  all  the  elements  joining,  these  former  Democrats 
were  the  most  vehement  in  their  strictures  of  all  the  old 
parties  among  the  elements  uniting  to  form  this  opposi- 
tion.   They  were  as  eager,  ordinarily,  to  denounce  "the  Abo- 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  517 

lition  agitators."*  These  overstrict  new  recruits,  in  many 
instances,  refused  to  support  any  nominee  who  had  been 
a  Whig.  In  this  way  three  of  the  most  prominent  of  them 
defeated  Mr.  Lincoln  for  senator;  and  at  various  other 
times  some  of  them  did  the  same  with  worthy  candidates 
who  had  been  Whigs  in  various  parts  of  the  State.  With 
all  their  refusals  to  support  Whigs  or  Abolitionists,  they 
often  made  an  office,  a  nomination,  or  some  other  per- 
quisite a  condition  for  deserting  their  old  party  wherever 
they  could  maneuver  with  those  who  could  contribute 
so  much  in  settlement  for  their  changed  convictions  of 
duty. 

These  and  the  Abolitionists,  who  were  more  quiet, 
thoughtful,  and  conscientious,  and  who,  as  a  rule,  were 
not  politicians,  but  industrious  men  that  gave  little  atten- 
tion to  politics,  were  the  elements  that  were  to  follow  Lin- 
coln into  a  great  slave-reforming  party.  His  heart  was 
right,  and  his  mind  was  prepared  for  the  work,  or  he  could 
not  have  endured  the  troubles  and  disappointments.  His 
great  incentives  to  the  w^ork  were  that  he  was  devoutly 
impressed  with  the  belief  that  he  was  to  be  a  conspicuous 
leader  as  early  as  1852,  when  he  said  as  much  to  me  in 
a  short  conversation  when  we  parted  at  Bloomington. 
"Robert,"  he  said,  "the  less  I  support  that  very  obnoxious 
Fugitive-slave  Law,  I  think,  is  all  the  better  for  me.  I 
have  imagined  that  I  am  to  be  something  of  a  leader 
against  slavery  encroachments,  and  that  I  consider  as  strik- 
ing and  positive  an  example  as  I  need  to  begin  with." 

It  will  appear  plain  that  Lincoln,  as  a  leader,  was  con- 
stantly harassed  with  contending  men  and  disputing  fac- 
tions. He  was  compelled  to  exercise  the  most  patient  for- 
bearance, consideration,  and  conservatism  to  lead  these 
incongruous  and  heterogeneous  elements  into  a  great  party, 
whose  declaration  against  slavery  was  that  "it  is  wrong 
and  a  relic  of  barbarism,"  but  that  they  "would  not  inter- 


618  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

fere  with  it  where  it  existed,  yet  were  unalterably  opposed 
to  its  extension  into  free  territory." 

In  this  way,  in  1854,  began  the  rushing,  storming  events 
of  his  life's  work,  that  was  closed  in  eleven  short  years. 
Douglas  was  maligned  and  denounced  as  no  man  had  ever 
been  in  our  political  history;  still  he  had  the  pluck,  the 
tenacity,  the  high  skill,  to  fight  it  out  to  the  end  with 
those  in  and  out  of  his  party.  This  was  well,  and  it  was 
surely  one  of  God's  providences  that  he  should  do  so;  for  in 
human  knowledge  and  wisdom  there  seemed  to  be  no  one 
who  could  lead  the  Democratic  party  of  the  free  States, 
and  hold  it  intact  in  its  allegiance  to  the  Nation.  Notwith- 
standing all  the  detraction  then  and  since,  where  would 
the  man  have  been  found  to  lead  the  opposing  parties  as 
well  as  these  two  great  leaders?  If  Douglas  had  been 
thrown  aside,  Atchison,  who  led  armed  Missourians  into 
Kansas,  would  have  succeeded  Douglas,  as  it  had  been 
planned  for,  and  the  hope  of  any  anti-slavery  success  would 
have  been  as  nothing. 

Douglas  was  denounced  thoughtlessly.  He  could  not 
have  prevented  the  repeal;  at  least  there  was  no  hope  of 
it  in  that  Congress  among  those  who  were  best  informed. 
There  was  no  more  hope  that  he  could  resist  his  party  from 
1846-58  than  there  was  that  Benton  could,  who  was  placed 
where  he  could  have  neither  voice  nor  influence.  If  it 
had  been  possible,  Douglas  would  have  been  relentlessly 
unhorsed.  He  was  the  only  Democratic  leader  left  who 
was  in  the  slave-leaders'  way,  and,  with  him  retired,  the 
unscrupulous  Atchison  would  have  had  legislative  control 
of  the  Senate.  In  that  case,  along  with  his  armed  inva- 
sions, he  could  have  suppressed  examination  of  the  deviltries 
going  on  in  the  Territories,  and  thereby  have  made  Kansas 
a  slave  State  almost  certainly. 

Many  of  these  denunciations,  if  not  all  of  them,  came 
from  the  men  who  had  lately  been  acting  with  Douglas, 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  519 

or  in  the  Whig  party,  with  the  same  ideas  on  the  slavery- 
question.  They  had  sanctioned,  in  one  party  or  the  other, 
all  the  encroachments  up  to  the  final  one  for  repeal,  which 
was  wrong,  just  as  all  of  the  concessions  had  been;  but 
with  all  said  against  it,  it  proved  to  be  just  what  Judge 
Douglas  claimed  in  the  beginning,  a  great  victory  for  free- 
dom. The  best  part  of  it,  too,  was  that,  if  the  question 
had  to  be  reopened,  as  the  South  demanded,  it  was  best 
to  have  it  settled  by  the  people — better  than  to  be  juggled 
over  in  compromises  for  another  generation  in  Congress. 

Douglas  held  one  of  the  most  delicate,  exasperating 
positions  ever  held  by  any  party  leader;  and  that  he  held 
it  through  such  a  period  of  upheaval,  angry  discussions, 
and  party  dissolving  proved  beyond  controversy  the  wonder- 
ful energy  and  capacities  of  the  man.  There  was  no  other 
man  living  then  who  could  have  done  it;  and  no  Demo- 
crat, North  or  South,  since  Jackson  had  shown  any  desire 
or  the  ability  to  attempt  it.  The  struggle  he  passed 
through  was  greater  than  Lincoln's  during  the  time,  and 
so  severe  that  it  took  twenty  years  or  more  from  his  life. 

In  1856,  two  years  after  the  repeal,  the  Democratic 
party,  under  the  lead  of  Douglas,  carried  Illinois  for  Buch- 
anan for  President,  sho\dng  beyond  doubt  how  well  he  had 
sustained  himself  with  his  own  people.  Those  who  reck- 
lessly denounced  him  were  sure  to  do  so  anyway;  for  it 
seemed  to  be  one  of  the  afflictions  of  the  time,  that  exag- 
gerated statement  and  personal  denunciation  was  generally 
indulged  in.  When  there  was  lack  of  provocation  for  de- 
nouncing parties  or  factions,  or  men  in  general,  or  Douglas 
in  particular,  all  the  rest  of  mankind  in  the  country  united 
in  denouncing  the  Abolitionists. 

Douglas  was  put  on  trial  for  leadership  from  1854-60 
as  it  seemed  no  man  ever  was  in  our  politics.  Every  leader 
of  his  party  in  the  free  States  went  down,  and  no  promi- 
nent one. made  much  effort  to  help  or  sustain  him.     It  was 


520  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

the  rank  and  file  of  liis  party  in  the  smaller  localities  that 
saved  him,  who  were  never  in  any  way  derelict  or  faithless 
to  him.  They  held,  as  he  did,  that  if  he  had  erred  and 
made  mistakes,  it  was  no  more  than  the  party  had  done, 
sanctioned  by  all  its  leaders.  They  held  that  the  other 
leaders  were  faithless  and  had  fallen  because  of  their  sub- 
serviency to  the  Southern  leaders,  and  sustained  Douglas 
because  of  his  unflinching  integrity  in  behalf  of  the  rights 
of  his  people. 

Mr.  Lincoln  entered  the  "Anti-Nebraska"  campaign  of 
1854  with  more  zeal  in  the  beginning  than  he  had  done  in 
any  one  since  1848,  and  with  such  continuing  interest  and 
increase  of  power  that  all  realized  something  unusual  and 
w^onderful  in  the  man,  his  control  of  himself,  his  subject, 
and  his  influence  over  his  hearers.  Not  then,  but  later  in 
his  work,  we  called  this  marvelous  power  "Lincoln's  inspi- 
ration."' Such  meetings  to  that  day  no  man  ever  held. 
People  came  from  far  and  near,  and  waited  all  day,  stood 
in  the  wind,  the  sun,  and  the  rain,  uncovered,  to  hear  him, 
and  remained  to  his  close.  He  did  not  discourse  or  lead 
in  the  wild  and  boisterous  harangues  and  rough  and  ear- 
nest eloquence  of  many  distinguished  men — such  as  Cor- 
win,  Marshall,  and  the  Ohio  and  Kentucky  school  of  ora- 
tors. His  was  the  strong  and  convincing  appeal  of  a  very 
serious,  earnest  man,  calling  the  people  to  their  senses  in 
reason  and  righteousness  and  fair  treatment  of  our  fellow- 
men  of  whatever  color,  condition,  race,  or  creed,  and  to 
an  observance  and  enforcement  of  the  great  principles  of 
human  liberty,  upon  which  our  Government  was  founded. 

He  met  Judge  Douglas  in  joint  debate  at  the  State 
Fair  near  Springfield,  in  October,  and  soon  afterwards  at 
Peoria.  There  arose  a  great  demand  for  copies  of  the  prin- 
cipal arguments  in  his  addresses,  particularly  from  those 
who  were  speaking  throughout  the  State,  for  use  at  their 
meetings.     In  compliance  with  this  demand,  he  wrote  out 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  521 

the  substance  of  his  Peoria  argument,  which  was  published 
in  almost  every  newspaper  in  the  State.  It  will  be  interest- 
ing, entertaining,  and  will  best  disclose  the  progress  of 
the  movement,  and  show  how  far  he  and  many  of  his  fol- 
lowers had  advanced  from  the  line  that  confined  all  inter- 
ference with  slavery  to  opposition  to  its  extension  into  free 
territory.  He  said:  "This  declared  indifference,  but  as  I 
must  think  covert  zeal,  for  the  spread  of  slavery,  1  can  not 
but  hate.  I  hate  it  because  of  the  monstrous  injustice  of 
slavery  itself.  I  hate  it  because  it  deprives  our  republican 
example  of  its  just  influence  in  the  world,  enables  the  ene- 
mies of  free  institutions  with  plausibilities  to  taunt  us  as 
hypocrites,  causes  the  real  friends  of  freedom  to  doubt  our 
sincerity,  and  especially  because  it  forces  so  many  really 
good  men  among  ourselves  into  an  open  war  with  the  very 
fundamental  principles  of  civil  liberty,  criticising  the  Decla- 
ration of  Independence,  and  insisting  that  there  is  no  right 
principle  of  action  but  self-interest. 

''The  doctrine  of  self-government  is  right,  absolutely 
and  eternally,  but  it  has  no  just  application  as  here  at- 
tempted; or,  perhaps  I  should  rather  say,  that  whether  it 
has  such  just  application  depends  upon  whether  a  Negro  is 
not  or  is  a  man.  ^If  he  is  not  a  man,  in  that  case  he  who 
is  a  man  may,  as  a  matter  of  self-government,  do  just  what 
he  pleases  with  him ;  but  if  the  Negro  is  a  man,  is  it  not  to 
that  extent  a  total  destruction  of  self-government  to  say 
that  he,  too,  shall  not  govern  himself?  When  the  white  man 
governs  himself,  that  is  self-government;  but  when  he  gov- 
erns himself  and  also  governs  another  man,  that  is  more 
than  self-government.  That  is  despotism.  What  I  do  say 
is,  that  no  man  is  good  enough  to  govern  another  man 
without  that  other  man's  consent. 

"The  master  not  only  governs  the  slave  without  his  con- 
sent, but  he  governs  him  by  a  set  of  rules  altogether  different 
from  those  which  he  prescribes  for  himself.    Allow  all  the 


522  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

governed  an  equal  voice  in  the  government;  that  and  that 
only  is  free  government.  Slavery  is  founded  in  the  selfish- 
ness of  man's  nature.  Opposition  to  it  is  his  love  of  justice. 
These  principles  are  an  eternal  antagonism,  and  when 
brought  into  collision  so  fiercely  as  slavery  extension  brings 
them,  shocks  and  throes  and  convulsions  must  ceaselessly 
follow.  Eepeal  the  Missouri  Compromise,  repeal  all  com- 
promises, repeal  the  Declaration  of  Independence,  repeal  all  ".| 
history,  still  you  can  not  repeal  human  nature. 

"I  particularly  object  to  the  new  position  which  the 
avowed  principle  of  this  Nebraska  Bill  gives  to  slavery  in 
the  body  politic.  I  object  to  it  because  it  assumes  that 
there  can  be  moral  right  in  the  enslaving  of  one  man  by 
another.  I  object  to  it  as  a  dangerous  dalliance  for  a  free 
people,  a  sad  evidence  that,  feeling  prosperity,  we  forget 
right,  that  liberty  as  a  principle  we  have  ceased  to  revere. 
Little  by  little,  but  steadily  as  man's  march  to  the  grave, 
we  have  been  giving  up  the  old  faith  for  the  new  faith. 
Nearly  eighty  years  ago  we  began  by  declaring  that  all  men 
were  created  free  and  equal;  but  now  from  that  beginning 
we  have  run  down  to  the  other  declaration  that  for  some 
men  to  enslave  others  is  a  sacred  right  of  self-government. 
These  principles  can  not  stand  together.  They  are  as  oppo- 
site as  God  and  mammon. 

"Our  republican  robe  is  soiled  and  trailed  in  the  dust. 
Let  us  repurify  it.  Let  us  turn  and  wash  it  white  in  the 
spirit,  if  not  the  blood  of  the  Eevolution.  Let  us  turn 
slavery  from  its  claims  of  'moral  right'  back  upon  its  ex- 
isting legal  rights  and  its  arguments  of  necessity.  Let  us 
return  it  to  the  position  our  fathers  gave  it,  and  there  let 
it  rest  in  peace.  Let  us  readopt  the  Declaration  of  Inde- 
pendence, and  the  practices  and  policies  which  harmonize 
with  it.  Let  North  and  South,  let  all  Americans,  let  all 
lovers  of  liberty  everywhere,  join  in  the  great  and  good  work. 
If  we  do  this,  we  shall  not  only  have  saved  the  Union,  but 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  523 

shall  have  so  saved  it  as  to  make  it  and  to  keep  it  forever 
worthy  of  the  saving.  We  shall  have  so  saved  it  that  the 
succeeding  millions  of  free,  happy  people  the  world  over 
shall  rise  up  and  call  us  blessed  to  the  latest  generation." 

The  election  for  members  of  the  Legislature,  who  were 
to  choose  a  United  States  senator,  was  vigorously  contested. 
The  result  was  that  no  party  had  a  clear  majority.  In  this 
the  Democrats,  who  had  long  held  the  State,  were  defeated. 
They  could  only  muster  forty-one  votes  for  the  election  of 
General  Shields's  successor.  No  party  or  individual  could 
command  a  majority  to  begin  with.  Lincoln  became  the 
leading  candidate  of  the  opposition.  He  had  been  elected 
a  member  of  the  Legislature;  but  he  resigned,  as  the  State 
Constitution  excluded  all  members  of  the  Legislature  from 
being  candidates  for  United  States  senators.  On  his  resig- 
nation, Sangamon,  being  a  close  county,  by  the  help  of  a 
few  pro-slavery  Whigs,  elected  a  Democratic  successor, 

K  B.  Judd  of  Chicago,  B.  C.  Cook  of  Lasalle,  and  J.  M. 
Palmer  of  Macoupin  Counties,  three  Democratic  State  sen- 
ators, were  united  against  Douglas;  but  would  not,  under 
any  circumstances,  vote  for  a  Whig.  These  held  the  balance 
of  power  in  the  Legislature.  They  were  able  men,  who 
became  more  or  less  conspicuous  afterwards.  One  of  the 
complications  of  the  situation,  as  reported  at  the  time,  was 
that  these  three  were  all  contingent  candidates  themselves, 
and  so  determined  to  hold  their  control  that  neither  one  of 
them  would  support  either  one  of  the  others.  They  were 
all  expecting  a  call  to  be  the  candidate;  but  none  came. 
When  the  voting-day  arrived,  as  no  one  had  nominated 
either  one  of  them,  they  united  on  Judge  Lyman  Trumbull, 
an  anti-Nebraska  Democrat.  There  should  have  been  no 
candidate  against  Lincoln  among  those  opposed  to  the 
Democratic  nominee,  for  he  had  done  more  for  their  possible 
success  than  any  other  dozen  of  them.  Without  his  patient, 
zealous,  and  continuous  work,  there  could  have  been  no  hope 


524  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

of  electing  any  one  against  Shields,  who  would  surely  have 
succeeded  himself;  but  these  three  very  good  men  wanted 
to  negotiate  before  they  entered  the  ranks  of  the  new  party. 

This  default,  the  want  of  uniting  on  Lincoln  as  the  can- 
didate by  reason  of  their  delays  and  negotiations,  resulted 
in  Lincoln's  defeat,  but  not  in  the  election  of  any  one  of 
the  three.  This  did  not  in  any  way  interrupt  or  interfere 
with  Lincoln's  plan  for  the  organization  of  the  new  party, 
or  its  success  in  electing  a  senator.  These  three  Democrats 
united  on  Trumbull,  who  was  an  able,  experienced,  and  well- 
educated  man,  past  middle  age,  and  who  upon  his  election 
proved  true  to  his  changed  party  relation,  and  became  one 
of  the  leaders  and  prominent  debaters  in  the  Senate. 

At  the  time  Trumbull  was  one  of  the  most  reserved, 
calm,  and  undisturbed  politicians  of  the  State,  if  indeed 
he  was  a  politician  in  its  strict  party  meaning.  He  was,  of 
all  men,  thought  of  then  as  the  least  likely  to  increase  the 
following  so  reluctantly  started  by  these  no- Whig-supporting 
Democrats.  Perhaps  it  was  the  sure  knowledge  of  these 
quiet,  unattractive  traits  of  Trumbull  that  united  these 
otherwise  ununitable  three  on  him.  Whatever  may  have 
been  their  purpose,  Lincoln  was  in  the  work  for  the  good 
of  the  cause  more  than  for  himself,  and  was  ready,  as  he 
always  was,  to  subordinate  his  own  desire.  When  the  time 
came  for  him  and  his  friends  to  elect  a  senator,  and  the 
five  free-soil  Democrats,  these  three  State  senators,  and 
two  others,  members  of  the  House  of  Eepresentatives,  would 
not  unite  in  his  support,  he  relinquished  his  own  candidacy, 
took  his  forty-six  good  friends  and  faithful  followers  over 
to  the  minority,  and  elected  their  candidate,  Trumbull,  to 
the  United  States  Senate.  Lincoln  believed  at  the  time, 
and  so  did  his  best  friends,  that  he  was  giving  up  a  remark- 
able opportunity,  one  that  his  friends  very  much  opposed 
and  regretted;  but  he  certainly  developed  in  his  personal 
defeat  a  leadership  for  higher  success. 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  525 

In  the  contest  it  was  developed  that  the  State  had  a  very 
thrifty  and  business-going  candidate  for  senator  in  the 
Democratic  party,  who  got  six  more  votes  for  senator  than 
Shields,  who  was  the  party  nominee.  This  candidate  was 
the  governor  at  the  time,  Joel  A.  Matteson.  He  had  the 
knack  of  doing  many  things  in  politics  that  have  been 
greatly  enlarged  upon  since  his  day.  Mr.  Lincoln  and  sev- 
eral others  understood  and  knew  what  his  candidacy  meant, 
more  than  any  surface  indications  revealed.  He  only  lacked 
two  votes  of  election,  and  with  no  agreement  among  the 
candidates  opposing  him,  he  would  soon  have  gained  the 
two  or  three  necessary  votes;  but  Lincoln,  in  his  superior 
skill  and  management,  turned  his  entire  vote  over  to  Trum- 
bull so  soon,  that  the  Matteson  plan  failed.  Lincoln  was 
accused  of  having  made  an  agreement  with  the  denounced 
Abolitionists,  who  had  elected  some  six  members  of  the 
House  of  Representatives;  besides  throughout  the  State  they 
had  helped  elect  every  opponent  of  the  regular  Democracy 
who  was  elected.  Lincoln's  agreement  with  them  amounted 
to  friendly  co-operation,  and  nothing  more.  The  three 
senators  mentioned,  if  they  did  not  originate  this  story  of 
an  agreement  with  the  Abolitionists,  which  would  have 
been  a  harmless  one  if  it  had  existed,  used  it  with  all  their 
power  for  Lincoln's  defeat. 

It  was  a  delicate  task  for  Mr.  Lincoln  to  keep  his  pro- 
slavery-inclined  Whigs  from  doing  some  direct  or  indirect 
injury  to  the  new-forming  party  organization.  They  would 
condemn  and  denounce  Judge  Douglas  and  his  party  for 
the  repeal  in  violent  terms,  but  in  the  next  breath  they 
would  denounce  Abolitionists  more  vehemently,  and  refuse 
to  co-operate  with  them  in  organizing  the  coming  party. 
As  a  noted  instance  of  this,  because  of  his  dislike  to  per- 
sonal quarrels,  they  dissuaded  him  from  Joining  in  the  first 
meeting  for  the  organization  of  the  Republican  party  at 
Springfield,  in  October,  1854,  because  Owen  Lovejoy,  brother 


626 


ABBAHAM  LINCOLN. 


of  the  murdered  Elijah  P.  Lovejoy,  was  at  the  meeting,  and 
was  one  of  the  prominent  leaders  participating  in  the 
organization. 

Their  platform  and  declaration  of  principles  was  a  mild 
one  for  Abolitionists,  for  they  saw  the  necessity  for  all 
parties  opposing  slavery  to  unite,  and  they  were  willing  to 
make  any  possible  concession;  but  the  feeling  against  them 
was  forced,  even  to  personal  malignity,  in  many  instances 
so  virulent  as  to  make  men  personal  enemies.  In  straining 
these  prejudices  to  their  utmost,  they  prevailed  for  the 
time,  and  kept  as  good  and  strong  a  man  as  he  then  was 
from  uniting  in  the  first  meeting  to  organize  the  anti-slavery 
party. 

One  of  the  most  convincing  tests  of  the  sincerity  and 
good  faith  of  this  anti-slavery  faction,  and  one  which  Mr. 
Lincoln  ever  after  appreciated,  was,  that  it  never  wavered 
in  his  support  because  of  his  absence,  but  held  to  him  the 
most  faithfully  of  all. 

There  was  a  foolish  story  told  about  Springfield  during 
this  senatorial  contest,  to  the  effect  that  Joshua  E.  Gid- 
dings,  of  Ohio,  had  instructed  the  Illinois  Abolitionists 
what  they  should  do;  and  that  in  this  way  these  leaders 
who  were  so  hostile  to  them  personally,  and  who  would  not 
support  any  of  them  for  office  or  public  position,  could 
easily  control  the  action  of  the  Illinois  Abolitionists.  This 
story  was  used  to  suppress  and  keep  down  some  of  the  most 
able  and  promising  young  men,  as  they  did  Lincoln,  for 
United  States  senator.  It  was  one  of  the  strange  things  of 
the  time  that  these  befogged  old  party  fossils.  Whig  and 
Democrat  alike,  went  about  denouncing  Abolitionists  at 
home  without  mercy,  but  were  quite  lenient  and  in  pro- 
fessed line  of  support,  toward  Seward,  Weed,  Greeley,  and 
even  "old  man  Giddings  of  Ohio." 

The  story  may  have  been  used  with  effect  in  some  places 
to  humiliate  those  whom  they  were  pleased  to  denounce. 


TTJE  ^fEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  527 

The  truth  is,  however,  that  the  Aholitionists  of  Illinois  were 
as  well  able  to  take  care  of  themselves  as  those  of  New 
England,  New  York,  or  Ohio.  They  knew  well  enough  from 
the  beginning  that  the  strength  and  spirit  of  the  anti- 
slavery  movement  depended  on  them  more  than  all  the 
other  combining  factions;  for  no  matter  how  mild  men 
might  be  when  they  first  began  to  resist  slavery  aggression, 
all  had  to  grow  to  Abolitionists  when  the  conflict  came. 
Douglas  said,  "There  are  only  two  parties  in  this  country; 
one  is  for  our  countr}^,  and  the  other  is  against  it."  Not- 
withstanding all  this,  our  faction  had  the  belief,  and  held  it 
firm,  that  all  anti-slavery  factions  would  come  to  theirs  in 
the  end;  but  in  the  gi'owth  there  was  no  end  of  per- 
secution. 

When  I  was  a  boy  growing  up  in  the  work  of  college  and 
university  building,  and  getting  something  of  training  and 
education  at  Bloomington,  the  students  determined  to  have 
two  out-and-out  college  societies,  as  good  as  they  had  any- 
where. We  thought  ourselves  equal  to  any  boys,  no  matter 
whether  they  grew  up  taking  care  of  sheep  on  the  Green 
Mountains,  hauling  logs  down  the  Penobscot,  catching  cod- 
fish along  the  Massachusetts  shores,  making  butter  and 
Limburger  cheese  along  the  Hudson,  or  raising  corn,  hogs, 
and  cattle  in  the  West.  We  were  all  young  Americans,  and 
we  were  going  to  have  our  college  societies.  The  subject 
was  a  new  one  to  us,  and  we  had  not  learned  exactly  all 
that  was  necessary  to  do.  We  met  and  did  what  men  usually 
do  in  a  quandar}^  appointed  a  committee  of  our  members  to 
ascertain  what  we  must  do,  and  tell  us  all  about  it.  After 
they  had  done  so  and  were  progressing,  the  committees 
pretty  soon  found  a  subject  too  deep  and  difficult  to  proceed 
with,  without  further  authority.  Another  meeting  was  held 
Avithout  disposing  of  the  more  weighty  questions,  leaving 
those  to  be  settled  and  discussed  in  the  future.  They  agreed 
that  two  committees  should  be  appointed  to  make  descrip- 


528 


ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 


tive  rolls  of  our  one  hundred  and  twenty  boys,  and  divide 
them  about  as  equally  as  possible  in  numbers,  and  with 
reference  to  scholarship,  age,  religious  belief,  politics, 
strength,  and  their  place  would  be  on  the  ball-ground. 

I  was  on  one  of  the  committees,  but  had  to  be  listed 
like  the  rest.  I  did  fairly  well  on  the  list  down  to  politics. 
When  I  was  asked,  "What  party  do  you  belong  to?"  I  re- 
plied, "The  Democratic."  The  committeeman  said:  "That 
will  never  do,  with  everybody  knowing  that  you  are  in  the 
Gridley-Davis  office,  which  Mr.  Lincoln  makes  his  also.  It 
would  not  look  respectful  for  a  boy  to  be  a  Democrat  with 
such  relations.  It  would  look  like  insubordination  on  the 
part  of  the  rising  generation,  and  I  advise  you  to  change 
your  answer  in  some  way."  The  boy  seemed  quite  authori- 
tative in  his  manner;  so  to  ease  it  up  and  concede  some- 
thing, I  replied:  "My  father  was  a  Democrat.  He  was  a 
friend  and  admirer  of  Judge  Douglas,  and  I  have  great 
respect  for  him  too,  and  believe  in  the  principles  of  the 
party  with  him,  except  on  his  present  course  concerning 
the  slavery  question.  I  am  a  Democrat,  as  I  understand  the 
name,  and  the  definition  of  party  belief  as  laid  down  by 
Jefferson.  I  am  a  believer  in  the  rights  of  the  people,  as 
against  any  other  power  or  asserted  prerogative.  But  the 
best  way  I  see  for  you  to  arrange  this  list,  if  you  think  it 
would  be  better  for  me  not  to  be  classed  as  a  Democrat,  as 
I  am  opposed  to  Douglas  on  the  slavery  question,  will  be 
to  put  me  down  as  an  Abolitionist."  "That  is  worse  still," 
roared  out  the  member  of  the  committee.  "My  father  is 
an  old-line  Whig,  and  John's  [who  was  another  member  of 
the  committee]  father  is  a  Democrat,  both  from  Tazewell 
County;  and  neither  one  of  our  fathers  will  allow  us  to  asso- 
ciate with  an  Abolitionist.  So  you  see,  that  no  matter  how 
well  we  think  of  you,  it  is  out  of  the  question ;  and  we  will 
let  you  stand  as  a  Democrat,  though  it  will  look  strange." 

This  raised  my  Scotch  disposition  and  "perseverance  of 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  529 

the  saints,"  all  I  had  at  least,  and  I  told  ^Iv.  Chairman  to 
register  me  as  an  Abolitionist,  or  not  at  all.  The  question 
waxed  strong  and  grew  bigger  in  the  college  for  several 
days,  and  then  in  the  town,  until  it  took  the  power  of  the 
Faculty,  a  body  of  very  good  men,  who,  however,  dreaded 
making  the  decision.  They  had  either  to  enforce  the  society 
rule,  that  if  they  desired  a  knowledge  of  the  member's  polit- 
ical belief,  he  had  the  right  to  be  registered  as  an  Abo- 
litionist if  he  wished  to  be,  or  they  would  have  to  rescind 
the  rule.  Thus  the  writer  at  about  seventeen  or  eighteen 
years  of  age  became  known  as  one  of  "the  agitators"'  which 
both  old  parties  waxed  so  strong  in  denouncing. 

One  strange  thing,  however,  was,  that  it  was  only  a  few 
months  until  our  members  had  increased  so  rapidly  that 
more  than  half  of  the  school  were  Abolitionists.  It  was  like 
the  first  plunge  into  a  cold,  sparkling  stream.  You  would 
have  a  little  shiver  in  jumping  in,  but  as  the  soft,  clean 
water  enfolded  you,  it  was  all  over,  and  you  realized  that 
you  were  all  right.  In  this  way  the  writer's  ideas  took 
effect,  and  kept  him  making  recruits  for  freedom  by  earnest 
persuasion,  until  afterwards  in  the  war  he  saw  thousands 
of  men  dying  from  the  wounds  they  received  in  defense 
of  the  horrid  system.  Of  this  system  even  these  men  said: 
*''We  have  fought,  and  like  many  thousands  are  dying  for  it, 
and  yet  it  has  kept  us  poor  men  all  our  lives — too  poor  to 
study  or  know  about  all  of  its  evil." 

The  resolutions  of  the  first  meeting  called  to  organize 
the  Eepublican  party,  at  Springfield,  in  October,  1854,  were 
moderate  indeed  when  compared  with  those  being  adopted 
all  over  New  York,  New  England,  and  other  free  States. 
On  the  slavery  question  they  declared  their  intentions  were 
to  restore  Kansas  and  Nebraska  as  free  Territories,  recog- 
nizing that  the  Constitution  vests  in  the  States,  not  as  some 
hold  in  Congress,  the  power  to  pass  laws  for  the  capture 
and  return  of  fugitives  from  labor.  They  demanded  the 
34 


530 


ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 


repeal  of  the  Fugitive-slave  Law,  an  act  to  restrict  slaver)' 
to  the  States  in  which  it  exists;  another  to  abolish  slavery  in 
the  District  of  Columbia;  another  to  prohibit  the  admission 
of  any  more  slave  States,  and  another  to  exclude  slavery 
from  any  Territory  where  the  United  States  has  exclusive 
jurisdiction,  and  protested  against  the  acquisition  of  any 
more  slave  territory. 

When  Mr.  Gridley  was  informed  of  the  slavery  discus- 
sion and  political  classification  in  our  school  societies,  it 
brought  him  into  one  of  his  brightest  analyzing  moods  so 
common  when  he  felt  inclined  to  investigate,  dissect,  and 
cut  anything  open  for  inspection  down  to  the  bottom.  He 
said:  "So  you  foolish,  growing-up  boys  are  just  as  foolish 
as  the  rest  of  mankind,  and  will  get  into  and  take  up  polit- 
ical questions  and  wrangle  over  them  just  like  men  in  their 
shops,  stores,  and  offices.  You  know  I  have  gone  out  of 
polities,  and  constantly  advise  my  friends  and  those  about 
me  to  do  the  same."  I  answered:  "We  do  not  consider  that 
studying  and  learning  all  we  can  about  slavery  is  altogether 
a  political  question;  at  least  we  believe  that  the  study  of 
it  to  some  extent  should  be  encouraged,  and  should  not  be 
considered  strictly  partisan  politics,  but  a  labor  question, 
if  no  further  than  that  which  in  some  way  affects  us  all  of 
the  time." 

Mr.  Gridley  continued:  "It  is  a  political  question  of  the 
highest  importance,  no  difference  what  men  say  or  believe, 
or  how  much  men  and  parties  say  that  it  is  to  be  confined 
here  or  there.  They  may  declare  as  they  please  that  it  is 
not  to  enter  into  this  or  that  party  or  State  or  neighbor- 
hood. Church  or  society;  still  as  you  boys  that  should  re- 
member your  mothers  better  have  found  out,  it  is  a  very 
live  question.  It  is  the  dividing  question  of  the  hour,  and 
people  are  considering  and  discussing  it  everywhere,  and 
have  a  right  to,  and  as  free-believing  and  free-talking  peo- 
ple we  must  soon  come  to  the  point  where  we  will  sustain 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  531 

every  one  in  his  right  to  do  so,  and  let  our  people  wrangle 
over  slavery  all  they  want  to. 

"The  ijnportant  political  questions  of  onr  country  are 
the  live  ones  on  which  the  people  make  the  clearest  and 
sharpest  divisions;  and  as  long  as  this  is  a  free  country  the 
people  will  and  must  discuss  and  decide  all  questions  as  they 
desire.  Stilh  you  know  that  I  think  it  is  wise  to  keep 
out  of  politics,  so  you  can  fit  yourself  and  pursue  some  re- 
munerative business. 

"We  will  not  take  our  school  studies,  our  educational 
and  college  society  rules  from  Eichmond,  nor  our  theology 
from  South  Carolina.  We  do  n't  want  partisan  politics  in 
our  schools  or  churches,  but  we  will  assert  and  preserve  the 
right  to  discuss  all  public  questions  wherever  wc  please; 
and  if  you  foolish  and  ambitious  boys  really  want  to  discuss 
the  slavery  question,  or  the  size  of  the  moon  and  whose  face 
is  on  it,  in  your  school,  and  divide  on  it  and  have  records 
and  rolls,  we  must  and  will  bring  the  whole  power  of  the 
city  of  Bloomington  to  sustain  you,  and  the  State  if  we 
need  it.  You  wall  find  the  Fells,  Brookaw,  McClun,  Dr.  Wor- 
rell, and  no  end  of  them  of  the  free  State,  free-soil  section, 
more  than  able  for  all  the  pro-slavery  out-and-outers  and 
their  contingent  helpers,  all  under  Judge  Davis,  who  are 
never  very  happ}-,  but  the  most  so  when  they  mangle 
dictionaries  to  scare  us  about  the  disturbing  Aboli- 
tionists." 

It  was  in  this  way  that  Mr.  Gridley  came  to  our  side  of 
the  discussion  of  the  slavery  question,  and  out  of  this  came 
the  reference  to  my  Abolitionism  when  he  referred  to  it 
at  the  first  meeting  I  had  with  Mr.  Lincoln  in  Bloomington 
in  the  early  fifties.  Bloomington  was  then,  like  all  such 
to^\'ns  and  villages  and  neighborhoods,  in  a  perpetual  dis- 
cussion of  the  slavery  issue.  The  citizens  were  a  quiet, 
orderly,  industriously-turned  people;  nevertheless  they 
waxed  warm  over  slavery,  and  a  history  of  it  even  in  that 


532  ABBAEAM  LINCOLN. 

small  town  would  be  full  of  interest.  Men  like  Mr.  Gridley 
and  the  others  named,  with  Jesse  Fell  generally  in  the  lead, 
and  Gridley  never  far  behind,  cut  the  subject  open  to  the 
bottom,  and  led  in  every  movement  of  the  people  to  discuss 
or  decide  any  public  matter  they  wanted  to.  They  kept  up 
the  discussion  until  the  Abolitionists  carried  McLean  County 
by  over  twelve  hundred. 

It  was  a  common  occurrence  in  those  early  days  for  a 
minister,  college  professor,  and  schoolteacher  to  be  taken 
aside  and  admonished  and  cautioned  against  expressing 
"Abolitionist  doctrines,"  as  they  disturbed  the  public  peace, 
and  created  dissensions  or  lack  of  harmony  and  success  in 
the  churches,  schools,  or  societies  where  they  were  intro- 
duced. This  cautioning  and  lack  of  manhood  sort  of  way  of 
dealing  with  a  great  public  and  labor-disrupting  system  grew 
weaker  and  weaker,  and  finally  went  down.  The  bottom 
turned  up  and  things  shifted  the  other  way,  when  about  all 
the  free  State  people  took  up  the  active  defense  of  our  free- 
labor  system,  very  much  sooner  than  the  two  generations 
which  ]\Ir.  Gridley,  far-seeing  as  he  was,  said  it  would  re- 
quire. Before  the  war  period  began,  colleges.  Church  socie- 
eties,  and  neighborhoods  were  hunting  the  Nation  up  and 
down  for  the  sharpest-tongued  men,  who  could  arraign 
slavery  and  its  atrocious  evils  in  the  strongest  terms. 

"  All  this  came  and  passed,  but  not  all  the  keen  satires 
of  Gridley  nor  the  life-tenure  of  the  offices  he  had,  could 
shake  Judge  Davis  out  of  his  denunciation  of  Abolitionists 
as  dangerous  disturbers  of  the  peace.  There  were  many  of 
these  half-and-half  doubters  on  the  border  and  in  every  free 
State  who  were  a  dead  load  for  freedom,  that  no  leadership 
but  Lincoln's  would  have  tolerated,  and  which  no  other 
leader  could  have  endured  but  himself. 

It  was  the  incubus  of  such  men  that  held  a  restraint  upon 
Mr.  Lincoln.  He  knew  and  understood  them  much  better 
than  any  one  of  his  time;  and  disagreeable  as  it  was  to  him. 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  633 

he  had  to  sit  down  time  and  time  again,  and  wait  for  their 
action.  The  Free  Soilers,  Abolitionists,  and  all  the  out- 
spoken anti-slavery  people,  who  were  constantly  denounced 
and  annoyed  in  their  business,  and  who  were  called  imprac- 
ticable, excitable,  and  incapable  men,  were  always  the  ones 
called  upon  to  forbear  and  be  patient.  They  submitted  as 
patient  men,  and  served  on  without  qualifying  conditions, 
faithful  to  the  end,  and  without  the  hope  of  office  or  high 
station.  Providence  was  over  all  this,  and  it  was  well  so  for 
the  final  victory;  but  to  the  toil-worn  laborer  in  the  political 
contests,  whose  reward  was  in  his  own  sense  of  right  and 
justice,  did  it  seem  long  to  wait. 

In  the  work  of  organizing  the  Eepublican  party,  in 
October,  1854,  these  Abolition-denouncing  Whigs  and  former 
Democrats  compelled  him  to  decline  service  in  committee 
and  other  work.  If  this  conduct  had  alienated  these  same 
denounced  Abolitionists,  as  the  Free-soil  Whigs  and  Demo- 
crats threatened  it  would  them,  and  taken  them  from  Lin- 
coln's support,  the  Eepublican  party  could  never  have  had 
successful  existence.  On  the  contrary,  when  these  de- 
nounced people  learned  the  truth  and  saw  the  difficulties 
surrounding  him,  and  the  incongruous  elements  out  of 
which  the  new  party  must  grow  to  its  strength,  they  left 
him  to  take  the  course  he  found  best.  They  were  fully  con- 
vinced that,  of  all  men  living,  he  was  the  one  best  fitted  to 
combine  these  heterogeneous  factions  into  a  party  of  any 
kind  for  united  action. 

In  Seward's  progress  it  was  better.  He  was  leading  in  a 
steady,  valiant  career,  with  no  hindrances  in  his  own  ranks, 
and  his  contestants  mainly  in  his  front,  where  he  had  few 
of  the  trying  difficulties  in  organization  which  Lincoln  had 
to  contend  with.  He  had  to  deal  with  and  harmonize,  among 
others,  two  generations  of  immigrants  from  the  slave  States, 
who  had  been  more  effectually  taught  that  Abolitionists  were 
disunionists  and  more  dangerous  agitators,  than  the  great 


534  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

truth  that  the  evil  system  of  slavery  was  rotting  out  the 
liberties  of  a  free  people. 

This  early  trial  of  patient  waiting  and  careful  gathering 
up  of  all  factional  elements  proved  to  be  the  schooling  and 
experience  he  most  needed  for  the  greater  contest  then 
crowding  down  upon  us.  In  the  beginning,  Seward  and 
other  such  leaders  seemed  to  be  making  better  progress,  and 
they  were  certainly  having  less  contentions  and  difficulties 
among  their  followers;  yet  when  the  great  war  waged  its 
furious  destruction  and  rent  asunder  so  many  lightly-made 
combinations,  Lincoln  gathered  his  apparently  unmixable 
factions  and  welded  them  into  one  incomparable  body  of 
Western  men.  Both  he  and  the}'  had  more  of  courage  and 
less  of  doubt  than  the  great  leader  Seward,  who  had  mar- 
shaled his  hosts  so  easily  and  promptly  in  the  beginning. 
With  this  understanding  we  can  read  in  the  lines,  and  be- 
tween them,  in  the  following  note  to  the  Eepublican  com- 
mittee of  the  first  Eepublican  Convention  of  which  we  know 
anything,  how  cautious  and  reserved  his  relation  had  to  be 
to  the  forming  elements  of  the  great  party.  To  the  chair- 
man of  the  Organizing  Committee,  of  which  he  had  been 
appointed  a  member,  he  wrote: 

"While  I  have  pen  in  hand  allow  me  to  say  that  I  have 
been  perplexed  to  understand  why  my  name  was  placed  on 
that  committee.  I  was  not  consulted  on  the  subject,  nor 
was  I  apprised  of  the  appointment  until  I  discovered  it  by 
accident  two  or  three  weeks  afterward.  I  suppose  my  oppo- 
sition to  the  principle  of  slavery  is  as  strong  as  that  of  any 
member  of  the  Eepublican  party,  but  I  had  also  supposed 
that  the  extent  to  which  I  feel  authorized  to  carry  that 
opposition  practically  was  not  at  all  satisfactory  to  that 
party.  The  leading  men  who  organized  that  party  were 
present  on  the  4th  of  October  at  the  discussion  between 
Douglas  and  myself  at  Springfield,  and  had  full  opportunity 
to  not  misunderstand  my  position." 


TEE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  535 

This  was  in  October,  ISoi,  and  it  is  certainly  the  most 
timid  and  indecisive  expression  Mr.  Lincoln  ever  made  on 
the  subject. 

The  balloting  that  resulted  in  Trumbull's  election  is  best 
described  in  Lincoln's  correspondence  with  E.  B.  Wash- 
burne,  a  Whig  member  of  Congress  from  Illinois,  who  was 
then  in  Washington: 

"February  9,  1855. 

"All  that  remained  of  the  Anti-Nebraska  force,  except- 
ing Judd,  Cook,  Palmer,  Baker,  and  Allen  of  Madison,  and 
two  or  three  of  the  secret  Matteson  men,  would  go  into 
caucus,  and  I  could  get  the  nomination  of  that  caucus.  But 
the  three  senators  and  one  of  the  two  representatives  above 
named  Vould  never  vote  for  a  Whig,'  and  incensed  some 
thirty  Whigs  to  think  they  would  never  vote  for  the  man 
of  the  five. 

"In  the  meantime  our  friends,  with  a  view  of  detaining 
our  expected  bolters,  had  been  turning  from  me  to  Trum- 
bull, till  he  had  risen  to  thirty-five,  and  I  had  been  reduced 
to  fifteen.  These  would  never  desert  me  except  by  my 
direction;  but  I  became  satisfied  that  if  we  could  prevent 
Matteson's  election  in  one  or  two  ballots  more,  we  could 
not  possibly  do  so  a  single  ballot  after  my  friends  should 
begin  to  return  to  me  from  Trumbull.  So  I  determined  to 
strike  at  once ;  and  accordingly  advised  my  remaining  friends 
to  go  for  him,  which  they  did,  and  elected  him  on  that,  the 
tenth  ballot.  Such  is  the  way  the  thing  was  done.  I  think 
you  would  have  done  the  same  under  the  circumstances; 
though  Judge  Davis,  who  came  down  this  morning,  declared 
he  never  would  have  consented  to  the  forty-seven  (oppo- 
sition) men  being  controlled  by  the  five.  I  regret  my  defeat, 
but  am  not  nervous  about  it." 

In  this  way  Trumbull  was  elected  senator,  and  the  sale 
of  a  United  States  senatorship  was  circumvented. 


\ 


536  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

As  the  organizing  work  came  upon  him  more  heavily, 
and  he  realized  the  strength  of  the  contending  forces  and 
the  weakness  of  our  own  slowly-uniting  factions,  he  gained 
strength;  as  the  subject  grew  in  magnitude,  he  gained  in 
capacity,  experience,  and  the  higher  qualities  of  a  great 
leader  to  meet  the  coming  crisis,  and  in  the  following  sum- 
mer of  1855  had  almost  reached  the  solid  ground  of  the 
coming  conflict,  '"That  the  Nation  could  not  exist  half 
slave  and  half  free." 

The  following  letter  reveals  his  wonderful  growth  dur- 
ing the  past  year: 

"Speingfield,  Illinois,  August  15,  1855. 
"Hon.  George  Eobertson,  Lexington,  Kentucky: 

"My  Dear  Sir, — The  volume  you  left  for  me  has  been 
received.  I  am  really  grateful  for  the  honor  of  your  kind 
remembrance,  as  well  as  for  the  book.  The  partial  reading 
I  have  already  given  it  has  afforded  me  much  of  both  pleas- 
ure and  instruction, 

"It  was  new  to  me  that  the  exact  question  which  led  to 
the  Missouri  Compromise  had  risen  before  it  rose  in  regard 
to  Missouri,  and  that  you  had  taken  so  prominent  a  part  in 
it.  Your  short  but  able  and  patriotic  speech  on  that  occa- 
sion has  not  been  improved  upon  since  by  those  holding  the 
same  views;  and,  with  all  the  light  you  then  had,  the  views 
you  took  appear  to  me  as  very  reasonable. 

"You  are  not  a  friend  of  slavery  in  the  abstract.  In  that 
speech  you  spoke  of  the  peaceful  extinction  of  slavery,  and 
used  other  expressions  indicating  your  belief  that  the  thing 
was,  at  some  time,  to  have  an  end.  Since  then  we  have  had 
thirty-six  years  of  experience;  and  this  experience  has  dem- 
onstrated, I  think,  that  there  is  no  peaceful  extinction  of 
slavery  in  prospect  for  us. 

"The  signal  failure  of  Henry  Clay  and  other  good  and 
great  men,  in  1849,  to  effect  anything  in  favor  of  gradual 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  537 

emancipation  in  Kentucky,  together  with  a  thousand  other 
signs,  extinguishes  that  hope  utterly.  On  the  greater  ques- 
tion of  liberty  as  a  principle,  we  are  not  what  we  have  been. 
When  we  were  the  political  slaves  of  King  George,  and 
wanted  to  be  free,  we  called  the  maxim  that  'all  men  are 
created  equal'  a  self-evident  truth;  but  now  when  we  have 
grown,  fat,  and  have  lost  all  dread  of  being  slaves  our- 
selves, we  have  become  so  greedy  to  be  masters  that  we  call 
the  same  maxim  'a  self-evident  lie.'  The  Fourth  of  July 
has  not  quite  dwindled  away;  it  is  still  a  great  day  for  burn- 
ing firecrackers. 

''That  spirit  which  desired  the  peaceful  extinction  of 
slavery  has  itself  become  extinct  with  the  occasion  and  the 
men  of  the  Eevolution.  Under  the  impulse  of  that  occa- 
sion, nearly  half  of  the  States  adopted  systems  of  emanci- 
pation at  once;  and  it  is  a  significant  fact  that  not  a  single 
State  has  done  the  like  since.  So  far  as  peaceful,  voluntary 
emancipation  is  concerned,  the  condition  of  the  Negro  slave 
in  America,  scarcely  less  terrible  to  the  contemplation  of  a 
free  mind,  is  now  as  fixed  and  hopeless  of  change  for  the 
better  as  that  of  the  souls  of  the  finally  impenitent.  The 
Autocrat  of  all  the  Eussias  will  resign  his  crown  and  pro- 
claim his  subjects  free  Republicans,  sooner  than  will  our 
American  masters  voluntarily  give  up  their  slaves. 

"Our  political  problem  now  is.  Can  we  as  a  Nation  con- 
tinue together  permanently  forever  half  slave  and  half  free? 
The  problem  is  too  mighty  for  me.  May  God  in  his  mercy 
superintend  the  solution! 

"Your  much  obliged  friend  and  humble  servant, 

"A.  Lincoln." 

This  letter  is  the  strongest  indication  of  character  up 
to  the  time,  and  shows  conclusively  the  influences  that  were 
developing  his  strong  analytical  mind  to  the  position  that 
the  contention  would  be  narrowed  down  to  one  between 


538  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

slavery  and  freedom.  This  letter  was  not  published  until 
after  the  war.  It  reveals  the  change  going  on  in  his  mind 
and  the  stronger  position  he  was  reaching  against  slavery. 
With  the  confidence  that  existed  between  us,  and  my 
frequent  declarations  that  I  was  an  Abolitionist,  and  that 
all  factions  in  opposition  to  the  slave-leaders'  party,  then  in 
control,  would  finally  unite  in  that  belief  from  necessity  if 
for  no  better  reason,  I  had  the  best  opportunities  of  know- 
ing what  Mr.  Lincoln's  would  be  as  early  as  1851-52.  But 
I  knew  as  well,  that  there  were  strong  men  whose  counsel 
and  position  he  could  not  wholly  overcome,  who  were  hold- 
ing him  down  to  the  most  conservative  expression,  if  not  to 
their  own  belief.  Among  the  most  prominent  of  these  were 
Judge  Logan,  Major  Stuart,  Jesse  K.  Dubois,  the  Speeds, 
Senator  Benton,  and  David  Davis. 


CHAPTER  XXIV. 

KANSAS  became  part  of  the  United  States  by  the  pur- 
chase of  the  territory  from  France  in  1803.  The 
negotiation  was  conducted  by  Kobert  Livingston,  of 
New  York,  and  James  Monroe,  of  Virginia,  on  the  30th 
of  April,  under  the  direction  of  President  Jefferson.'  It 
was  made  directly  with  the  great  Napoleon  and  his  Min- 
ister of  Finance.  The  sum  was  very  large  for  those  days; 
but  it  was  an  acquisition  of  such  incalculable  value  to  us 
as  to  be  well  worth  ten  times  what  it  cost.  The  territory 
gained  was  more  valuable  and  of  greater  extent  than  the 
thirteen  Colonies  and  all  they  owned  at  the  close  of  the 
Revolution.  The  price  and  terms  of  payment  were  eleven 
million  two  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  dollars  in  United 
States  bonds,  at  six  per  cent  interest,  with  the  interest 
payable  in  Paris,  London,  or  Amsterdam.  The  principal 
was  payable  at  the  United  States  treasury  in  Washington 
in  sums  of  three  million  dollars  annually,  commencing 
fifteen  years  after  the  bonds  were  issued.  The  commis- 
sioners also  agreed  the  same  day  to  pay  twenty  million 
francs,  which  additional  sum  was  to  be  applied  by  France 
in  payment  of  claims  due  American  citizens,  making  the 
entire  cost  of  Louisiana  Territory  fifteen  million  dollars. 
The  act  of  Congress  for  the  admission  of  Missouri  as 
a  State  in  1820,  constantly  referred  to  as  the  Missouri  Com- 
promise, provided  that  "in  all  the  territory  ceded  by  France 
to  the  United  States  under  the  name  of  Louisiana,  which 
lies  north  of  latitude  36  degrees  thirty  minutes  north,  ex- 
cepting only  such  part  as  is  included  within  the  limits  of 

539 


540  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

the  State  of  Missouri  contemplated  by  this  act,  slavery 
and  involuntary  servitude,  otherwise  than  in  the  punish- 
ment of  crime,  whereof  the  parties  shall  have  been  duly 
convicted,  is  prohibited."  Thus  in  law  it  rested  until  May 
1854 — for  thirty-four  years — until  the  two  Territories  of 
Kansas  and  Nebraska  were  organized.  Section  14  of  the 
act  of  organization  declared  that  "the  Constitution  and 
all  laws  of  the  United  States  which  are  applicable  shall 
be  and  remain  in  force  in  these  Territories,  except  the  act 
known  as  the  Missouri  Compromise  of  1820,  which  is  de- 
clared inoperative  and  void,  because  of  the  adoption  of  the 
later  measures,  known  as  the  Compromises  of  1850." 

About  the  same  time,  probably  as  a  result  of  this  ex- 
cited discussion  in  Congress,  which  soon  spread  all  over  the 
country,  the  Legislatures  of  Massachusetts  and  Connecticut 
issued  charters  to  emigrant  aid  societies.  Their  objects 
were  peaceful  and  harmless  to  any  one,  except  those  who 
were  determined,  law  or  no  law,  to  make  Kansas  a  slave 
State.  They  were  to  aid  people  seeking  homes  in  the  West 
by  collecting  and  publishing  in  convenient  form  all  useful 
information  for  Western  emigrants,  and  indicating  the 
best  routes  of  travel  and  all  matters  of  transportation,  which 
were  of  much  importance  in  view  of  the  long  and  tedious 
journeys  westward.  They  managed  such  things  to  the 
benefit  of  the  emigrants,  providing  for  regular  dates,  when 
a  number  could  go  at  the  same  time  and  at  much  lower 
rates  of  fare.  There  were  perhaps  two  or  three  thousand 
people,  mostly  from  New  England  and  New  York,  thus  aided, 
who  nevertheless  paid  their  own  expenses  to  Kansas  and 
Nebraska.  This  was  a  very  inconsiderable  number  in  filling 
up  such  vast  Territories,  and  not  the  twentieth  of  those  who 
could  have  gone  and  found  better  homes  and  better  means 
of  living  than  they  had  on  their  own  poor  and  wornout 
farms. 

By  far  the  largest  emigration  was  from  the  surround- 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  541 

ing  and  contiguous  Western  and  Northwestern  States  and 
Territories.  This  has  always  been  the  way  of  settlement 
for  the  principal  part  of  any  of  our  growing  Territories  and 
States  as  well.  Much  was  said  of  these  "Yankee  Aid  So- 
cieties," and  their  work  and  purposes  were  exaggerated  to 
suit  the  desires  of  those  who  wanted  to  take  slavery  into 
Kansas  with  the  aid  of  Missouri  border  societies  under 
Atchison,  "peacefully  and  unbeknownst"  to  anybody  until 
it  was  riveted  down  past  removal.  But  slavery  could  not 
have  been  fastened  down  and  held  there  in  those  Territories 
in  that  way  if  those  aid  societies  had  not  sent  a  man,  a 
prayer-book,  or  a  Sharp's  rifle. 

The  emigration  that  went  west  to  Kansas  and  Nebraska 
in  the  covered  wagons  from  Ohio,  Indiana,  Illinois,  Mich- 
igan, Wisconsin,  and  Iowa  by  the  hundred  thousands,  went 
of  their  own  accord;  and  these  would  have  fought  four  or 
five  times  as  hard  to  make  Kansas  a  free  State  if  it  had 
been  necessary.  It  is  true  that  most  of  them  went  armed, 
as  it  was  then  the  custom  for  those  emigrating  to  make  up 
pioneer  and  Western  settlements. 

These  movers'  wagons  and  their  people — the  movers  and 
their  caravans — were  a  peculiar  American  institution.  The 
wagons  generally  held  the  family  and  their  belongings, 
while  the  able-bodied  men  trudged  along  the  roads  or 
cleared  the  way,  and  took  a  general  oversight  of  the  work 
and  what  they  had,  whether  much  or  little.  Ordinarily 
they  were  peaceable,  hard-working  men;  but  if  any  sought 
to  take  unfair  advantage  of  them,  they  found  men  well 
able  to  take  care  of  themselves.  They  carried  a  loaded 
gun  or  two  strapped  on  the  inside  or  outside  of  every 
wagon,  within  convenient  reach;  and  there  was  always  in 
sight  or  within  ready  call  a  very  capable  man  or  boy  to 
use  the  weapons  in  case  of  necessity. 

There  was  a  pretty  large  emigration  from  Kentucky, 
Arkansas,  and  Missouri  into  Kansas,  aside  from  those  taken 


542  ABBAHAM  LINCOLN. 

there  and  going  vohmtarih^  to  make  it  a  slave  State.  Many 
of  these  people,  although  from  slave  States,  went  thither 
to  be  rid  of  slavery,  and  became  constant  and  courageous 
friends  of  freedom,  and  fought  for  it  through  all  the  bloody 
work  to  the  end. 

There  were  perhaps  a  hundred  or  more  slaveholders 
who  moved  across  the  line  into  Kansas  from  Missouri,  with 
about  twice  as  many  slaves,  whose  purpose  was  to  fix  the 
slave-system  on  the  Territory,  and  so  announce  it  by  di- 
rection of  Atchison.  Their  further  purpose  was  to  secure 
a  large  body  of  public  lands  at  low  prices  for  each  one. 

K  party  of  thirty  or  more,  with  Mr.  Branscomb,  of  Massa- 
chusetts, founded  the  city  of  Lawrence  early  in  1854,  which 
was  about  the  first  permanent  free  State  settlement.  Later 
in  the  season,  Charles  Eobinson  and  S.  C.  Pomeroy  joined 
them  with  another  colony  of  seventy  people. 

About  the  same  time  there  was  a  meeting  in  Platte 
County,  Missouri,  convenient  to  the  Kansas  border.  Sena- 
tor Atchison  was  the  leading  spirit  at  the  meeting  and 
chief  director  of  the  movement  on  the  part  of  the  pro- 
slavery  managers.  This  meeting  gave  out  the  truth  and 
revealed  the  processes  by  which  they  were  to  effect  their 
purposes.  Similar  meetings,  under  the  same  leadership, 
were  held  all  along  the  Missouri  border  for  almost  two 
hundred  miles,  which  was  a  tolerably  well-settled  region. 
This  Atchison,  whom  the  slave-propaganda  at  Washington 
had  planned  to  make  chairman  of  the  Senate  Committee 
on  Territories  in  place  of  Douglas,  said  to  his  hearers  in 
a  speech,  which  was  published  and  circulated  among  them 
for  their  use:  "When  you  are  in  one  day's  journey  of  the 
Territory,  when  your  peace,  your  quiet,  and  your  property 
depend  on  your  action,  you  can,  without  unusual  exertion, 
send  five  hundred  of  your  young  men  who  will  vote  in  favor 
of  your  institutions.  Should  each  county  in  Missouri  do 
its  duty,  the  question  will  be  decided  quietly  and  peaceably 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  543 

at  the  bcallot-box.  If  we  are  defeated,  then  Missouri  and 
all  the  other  Southern  States  will  have  shown  themselves 
recreant  to  their  interests,  and  will  deserve  their  fate." 

The  meeting  resolved  "that  this  Platte  County  Defens- 
ive Association  will  hold  itself  in  readiness,  whenever  called 
upon  by  any  of  the  citizens  of  Kansas,  to  assist  in  remov- 
ing any  and  all  emigrants  who  go  there  under  the  auspices 
of  jS'orthern  emigrant  aid  societies,"  They  more  com- 
monly called  them  "Yankee  Nigger-stealing  Aid  Societies." 

The  Platte  County  Society  was  not  laggard  or  lacking 
in  the  prosecution  of  its  horrible  work.  It  kept  holding  its 
meetings,  and  under  Atchison's  and  their  own  zealous  la- 
bors much  was  done,  and  many  instructions  were  promul- 
gated. At  one  meeting,  held  in  August,  a  formal  resolu- 
tion was  adopted,  urging  slaveholders  to  move  into  the 
new  Territory  with  tlieir  slaves,  and  declaring  that  their 
association  would  guarantee  their  protection.  There  were 
a  number  of  these  slavery-projecting  secret  societies  in 
Western  Missouri  before  the  passage  of  the  Kansas-Ne- 
braska act,  which  fact  was  disclosed  by  the  Congressional 
investigation  of  1856. 

The  history  of  the  governors  sent  to  Kansas  to  make 
it  a  slave  State  discloses  a  dastardly  and  despicable  piece 
of  work,  wrought  out  during  Pierce's  and  Buchanan's  Ad- 
ministrations and  the  ascendency  of  the  pro-slavery  regime. 
A  great  deal  of  craft  and  scheming  was  exercised  in  the 
selection  of  governors  for  Kansas.  It  was  an  honorable 
position.  The  appointee  would  be  conspicuous,  and  in  the 
rapid  turning  of  events  he  might  win  distinction;  and  so 
the  pro-slavery  leaders  planned  to  have  some  Northern  men 
appointed,  whom  they  could  make  pay  for  the  distinction, 
or  the  chance  to  win  it,  by  discretion  and  silence  after  they 
were  appointed.  This,  as  they  reasoned  with  themselves, 
would  show  entire  fairness  on  their  part.  Both  Adminis- 
trations decided  that,  under  the  circumstances,  the  office 


644  ABBAEAM  LINCOLN. 

of  governor  should  go  to  some  Xorthern  Democrat;  but 
the  pro-slavery  leaders  determined  that  he  should  not  be 
an  obstruction  to  their  plan.  Under  the  operation  of  this 
plan  there  was  one  firm  hold  which  they  took  and  prepared 
for  long  before  it  was  determined  that  some  pliant  North- 
ern man  should  be  appointed  governor.  This  hold  was  that 
Atchison  should  nominate  the  Secretary  of  the  Territory, 
to  act  as  governor  in  the  absence  of  the  appointee.  Very 
little  was  left  for  a  governor  to  do;  but  everything  the 
slave-leaders  could  not  manage  from  Washington  was 
turned  over  to  this  secretary  to  carry  out  in  all  its  details; 
hence  whoever  might  be  governor,  they  provided  that  there 
was  to  be  no  doubt  whatever  as  to  who  should  be  this 
secretary. 

It  happened  as  it  was  desired.  One  Woodson,  a  reliable 
selection  of  Atchison's,  was  appointed,  and  held  the  place 
until  the  vicious  scheme  to  make  Kansas  a  slave  State 
failed,  as  much  from  the  overdone  ruffianism  of  Western 
Missouri  bandits  as  from  the  defense  of  freedom  by  the 
free  State  settlers. 

The  conspiracy  was  successful  up  to  a  certain  point. 
There  was  no  part  of  the  scheme  that  was  not  provided  for 
so  far  as  the  audacious  leaders  could  anticipate.  The  story 
of  the  war  for  freedom  in  Kansas  has  filled  volumes.  All 
of  them  are  full  of  interest,  and  amply  repay  any  pa- 
triot's study  and  patient  investigation.  Of  one  thing,  how- 
ever, all  of  them  should  be  relieved — the  expressed  belief 
that  there  was  any  doubt,  accident,  or  uncertainty  on  the 
part  of  the  slave  oligarchy  in  their  plan  to  project  slavery 
into  the  Territory. 

Jefferson  Davis  was  the  head  and  undisputed  leader  in 
the  despotism,  and  before  the  war,  through  these  two  Ad- 
ministrations, the  Presidents,  Cabinets,  and  the  Supreme 
Court  were  as  dutiful  and  subservient  to  his  control  as 
his  slave  State  of  Mississippi.     High  political  contentions 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  545 

and  angry  personal  disputes  were  in  progress  all  about 
him;  but  they  never  caused  him  to  deviate  from  his  policy. 
He  eitheir  brought  them  all  under  absolute  control,  or 
drove  them  out  of  his  party  organization  as  far  as  it  was 
possible.  In  his  shrewd  way  of  using  every  available  aux- 
iliary for  the  promotion  of  his  cause,  no  man  that  held 
political  influence  was  ever  neglected  or  escaped  his 
scheming  attempts.  Some  men  were  loaded  down  with 
the  dead  weight  of  slavery  extension  in  the  free  States, 
hateful  and  repugnant  as  the  system  was  to  the  people  of 
their  States. 

To  begin  with,  in  this  war  for  freedom,  the  records,  seals, 
and  instruments  of  writing  bearing  authority,  and  the  pre- 
serving and  promulgating  of  what  they  had  of  law,  were  all 
in  the  hands  of  this  pro-slavery  secretary  of  the  Territory, 
Woodson.  In  this  situation  Jefferson  Davis  was  in  supreme 
control,  and  Atchison  was  field-marshal  in  command  of  the 
pro-slavery  marauders  on  the  border.  Their  plans,  with 
Woodson  acting  as  governor,  were  carried  on  through  much 
of  the  first  two  years.  Three  of  the  Northern  governors 
revolted  and  either  resigned  or  were  removed,  giving 
Woodson  the  advantage  of  acting  as  governor  through  the 
periods  of  changing,  the  delays  of  those  leaving,  and  the 
time  taken  for  the  coming  of  the  new  appointees.  In  this 
way  Atchison  prevailed  to  the  point  that  Woodson  was  gov- 
ernor through  the  lawmaking  period  of  the  Territory, 
when  their  plans  were  so  far  successful  that,  in  their 
"bogus  laws,"  slavery  was  fastened  on  the  Territories,  at 
least  in  nam.e.  Besides  this,  the  civil  war  for  slavery  exten- 
sion had  begun. 

They  had  the  courts,  as  they  had  planned,  ready,  at 
Atchison's  move  or  nod,  to  do  his  bidding.  They  had 
Stringfellow,  a  Missourian,  with  a  newspaper  just  across 
the  river  in  Kansas,  but  whose  home  was  in  Missouri.  He 
called  his  paper  the  Squatter  Sovereign,  possibly  in  derision  of 
35 


546  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

the  plan  of  the  free  Northern  Democracy  to  help  the  squat- 
ters get  homes  where  they  could  vote  slavery  down.  But 
of  a  truth,  the  newspaper  was  nobody's  sovereign,  and  the 
Stringfellow  that  could  be  stretched  across  the  muddy  Mis- 
souri Elver  was  as  dirty  a  vassal  as  Atchison  ever  took 
across  the  border. 

In  this  hostile  invasion  there  was  John  Calhoun,  of  the 
"candle-boxes,"  who  knew  how  to  use  them,  with  a  full, 
certified,  made-up,  and  authenticated  election  in  them,  to 
preserve,  conceal,  and,  at  the  moment,  produce  them — 
records,  ballots,  and  all — in  form  and  substance,  just  as 
Atchison's  plans  required. 

There  were  so  many  of  them,  with  so  many  offices  and 
places  to  fill,  that  it  would  be  over-tedious  to  enumerate 
them.  From  the  governor  and  secretary  down  it  was  to 
be  a  whole  made-up  invasion  of  Government — military, 
civil,  and  local,  all  provided — from  Missouri  into  Kansas. 
There  were  to  be  judges,  or  those  who  were  to  be  so 
counted,  a  Legislature,  Territorial  and  county  officers, 
sheriffs,  magistrates,  deputies,  some  who  could  read  and 
write  to  keep  the  records  and  the  post-offices,  sufficiently 
educated  to  exclude  "the  incendiary  abolition  and  aid 
societies'  newspapers,"  all  under  the  pay  of  the  United 
States  or  of  the  Territory  that  was  to  be.  They  were  to 
have,  in  all,  a  full  complement  of  men  and  materials  ready 
to  move  in  a  compact  body  and  make  the  slave  Territory 
at  once,  with  all  the  furnishings  and  equipment  and  para- 
phernalia of  authority  about  it,  with  the  rude  belongings  of 
a  slaveholder's  dependency.  But  more  than  these,  there 
was,  and  had  to  be,  an  armed  body  of  Missourians,  of  at 
least  twenty-five  hundred  men,  officered,  divided  into  conven- 
ient commands,  subsisted,  sheltered,  and  supplied  with  am- 
munition for  the  peaceful  invasion  of  Kansas,  to  help  their 
friends,  who  were  going  there  afterwards,  to  make  it  a 
slave  Territory. 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  547 

All  of  this,  which  is  barely  outlined  here,  was  done. 
This  same  Atchison  gathered  up  on  the  border  of  Mis- 
souri, mobilized  civil  and  military  bodies,  and  equipped  and 
formed  them  in  the  best  ways  for  his  organization.  He  held 
under  him  this  command  for  months,  with  ability  and  devo- 
tion to  his  scheme  and  purpose  that  would  have  made  him 
famous  in  any  worthy  cause.  This  second  man  in  power 
and  distinction  in  our  country  at  the  time  levied,  formed, 
and  conducted  one  of  the  most  diabolical  invasions  ever 
led  into  any  peaceful  country  against  the  sacred  rights 
and  liberties  of  its  people.  He  maintained  his  campaigns 
and  desultory  incursions,  armored  assaults  and  civil  war, 
against  these  free  people  for  almost  two  years. 

Missouri  grew  tired  of  this  border  dictator,  and  retired 
him  from  the  United  States  Senate  when  his  term  expired; 
but  notwithstanding  this,  he  afterwards  pursued  his 
wretched  work  for  a  year  or  more,  fully  sustained  by  the 
slave-leaders  at  Washington.  There  is  another  item  in 
his  bad  career  that  needs  something  of  explanation.  His 
principal  followers  were  Missourians;  but  they  were  a  band 
of  adventurers  and  lawbreakers  who  were  gathered  there 
by  this  leader,  and  were  the  siftings  and  outlawed  despera- 
does of  many  States,  free  as  well  as  slave.  The  most  of 
them  were  safer  with  Atchison  than  anywhere  else  at  the 
time;  for  they  had  been  lawbreakers  elsewhere  before  they 
became  these  desperate  border  bandits. 

With  this  condition  of  things  in  Kansas  throughout  thrf 
greater  part  of  1854,  recognizing  the  progress  that  followed 
up  to  1856,  it  was  not  strange  that  the  President  should 
declare  in  a  message  to  Congress  that  "slavery  existed  as 
surely  in  Kansas  as  in  Georgia.''  It  was  in  this  condition, 
when  all  seemed  to  be  lost,  and  when  the  free  State  people 
seemed  wornout  and  defeated  in  the  struggle,  that  God 
interposed  to  save  Kansas  and  the  Nation  from  the  lash 
of  the  slave-master. 


548  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

Some  time  in  July,  1854,  President  Pierce's  Adminis- 
tration, with  the  consent  of  Jefferson  Davis,  found  a  sim- 
ple-minded Pennsylvania  Democrat — Andrew  H.  Heeder — 
whom  they  sent  out  to  Kansas  as  its  first  governor.  In  his 
preparatory  sort  of  civil  service  examination,  or  test  of 
qualification,  he  said  he  "believed  in  selling  niggers  just 
as  much  as  he  did  in  selling  horses,  and  would  like  if  he 
owned  a  number  to  take  with  him."  For  awhile  after  his 
arrival  at  Atchison's  seat  of  government  on  the  Missouri 
Eiver,  he  was  impressed  with  the  belief  that  he  was  the 
governor,  unaware  and  oblivious  of  the  arrangement  that 
he  was  to  be  honored  and  paid  and  hold  discreet  silence 
concerning  all  that  Atchison  and  Woodson  had  acted  upon. 

In  truth  it  must  be  written  that  Eeeder  resented  their 
authority  not  very  long  after  his  arrival,  and  was  altogether 
guileless  enough  to  believe  that  he  could  resist  them.  He 
issued  his  first  proclamation  for  an  election  to  be  held 
November  29th,  to  elect  a  delegate  to  Congress.  Atchison 
was  not  prepared  for  this;  but  he  sounded  the  alarm  at 
once,  got  ready  in  short  order,  invaded  the  Territory  with 
his  horde  of  "peaceful"  armed  men,  took  violent  possession 
of  nine  out  of  the  seventeen  polling  places,  and  polled  and 
counted  1,729  illegal  against  1,114  legal  votes.  They  had 
elected  Whitfield,  late  an  Indian  agent  and  a  reliable  pro- 
slavery  Administration  office-holder,  delegate  for  the  Ter- 
ritory in  Congress.  The  invaders  were  somewhat  chagrined ; 
indeed,  it  was  said  that  some  of  them  were  furious  over  their 
indecisive  triumph,  on  learning  that  Whitfield  had  been 
voted  for  also  by  the  legal  voters,  and  therefore  elected 
without  opposition.  The  few  free  State  people  at  that 
early  day  believed  that,  with  the  experience  Whitfield  had, 
and  his  knowledge  of  the  condition  of  the  new  settlement, 
it  was  best  for  all  to  unite  and  elect  him,  and  that,  as  far 
as  they  knew,  he  was  the  best  fitted  to  represent  them;  and 
with  something  of  faith  in  the  man's  honesty  they  did  so. 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  549 

A  year  later  there  would  have  been  no  free  State  ballots 
wasted  on  Whitfield;  but  for  the  first  winter,  and  through 
the  first  election,  they  preserved  the  peace  in  voting  for 
Whitfield. 

Eeeder  did  not  realize  the  strength  and  formidable 
character  of  the  movement  to  take  slavery  into  Kansas. 
At  the  time  public  disapproval,  the  dividing  of  the  Demo- 
cratic party  on  the  slavery  issue,  and  the  opposition  fusion 
House  of  Representatives,  with  X.  P.  Banks  as  speaker, 
were  all  that  was  in  the  way  of  the  easy  introduction  and 
supremacy  of  the  pro-slavery  party  and  slavery  in  Kansas; 
but  these  were  strong  enough,  as  they  were  growing,  to 
keep  alive  the  determination  of  the  anti-slavery  people 
everywhere,  with  some  promise  of  relief  to  the  sorely-tried 
settlers  Avho  were  fighting  for  freedom.  Before  the  election 
of  the  next  year,  Eeeder  very  prudently  authorized  a  care- 
ful enumeration  of  the  citizens  of  the  Territory,  which  was 
completed  in  February,  1855. 

On  the  result  of  this  census  it  was  found  that  the  total 
population  was  8,601,  of  which  2,905  were  legal  voters. 
Based  on  this  census,  the  governor  apportioned  the  Terri- 
tory into  legislative  districts,  appointed  judges,  officers,  and 
clerks,  and  ordered  an  election  for  members  of  the  Legis- 
lature to  be  held  March  30th.  He  took  every  precaution, 
and  prepared  as  well  as  he  could  for  a  fair  election.  He 
recognized  the  existing  divisions  of  "free  State  and  slave 
State,"  and  divided  the  officers  between  them,  judges  and 
constables  who  were  to  act,  conduct  an  honest  election,  and 
preserve  the  peace.  At  the  polling  places  in  the  counties 
along  the  Missouri  border  he  appointed  two  free  State  and 
one  slave  State  man  for  each  as  judges,  with  the  desire  to 
have  a  fair  vote  in  recognizing  and  encouraging  them.  He 
published  and  promulgated  specific  and  rigid  rules  for  con- 
ducting the  election,  among  them  positive  instructions  that 
the  judges  and  all   the   officers  should   be   sworn,   declare 


550  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

themselves  qualified  voters  under  the  Territorial  laws,  and 
that  the  constables  should  protect  the  voting-places  from 
disturbances  and  the  voters  from  any  interference  or 
violence. 

As  soon  as  the  election  was  fixed  and  proclaimed,  the 
"Platte  County  Association,"'  "the  Blue  Lodges,"  and  other 
pro-slavery  societies,  were  informed  and  ordered  to  be  in 
readiness  for  their  work  by  the  field-marshal.  No  detail 
was  to  be  left  unattended  to  or  neglected,  and  none  were. 
This  was  their  culminating  advance  in  their  career  of  bor- 
der outrage  and  outlawry,  when  they  were  creating  a  Legis- 
lature that  was  to  take  slavery  into  Kansas,  with  mobilized 
militia  to  enforce  its  acts.  In  order  to  arouse  these  maraud- 
ers to  action,  meetings  were  common,  where  all  free  State 
people  were  denounced  and  threatened  with  their  fierceness 
at  the  safe  Platte  County  distance.  They  were  kept  at 
work  recruiting,  drilling,  arming,  and  training  men  and 
horses  for  the  peaceful  work  of  an  all-night  invasion  in  forced 
marches.  Subsistence  and  whisky  were  always  at  hand. 
They  were  filled  full  of  false  stories,  that  thousands  of 
recruits  were  being  sent  thither  by  the  Northern  aid  socie- 
ties, and  these  poor  wretches  believed  them.  These  border 
bandits  were  trained  to  the  savagery  in  which  they  were 
to  engage  with  all  the  venom  of  infuriated  men  full  of  liquor. 
Their  outrageous  work  was  to  be  done,  and  these  wretched 
victims,  whose  life  was  not  worth  so  much  as  a  slave's,  were 
poisoned  and  stimulated  for  their  deadly  work  and  plan 
to  drive  the  free  State  people  from  their  homes. 

This  second  invasion  of  Atchison  and  his  horde  of  armed 
brigands  was  much  more  formidable  than  the  first.  The 
census  had  revealed  the  population  to  him  as  well  as  to  the 
free  State  people,  giving  the  detailed  information  of  each  lo- 
cality and  the  number  of  legal  voters  in  each  precinct.  With 
this  information  he  doubled  his  force  to  five  thousand,  and 
proceeded  into  the  Territory  in  the  night  of  the  day  be- 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  651 

fore  election,  and  took  possession  of  every  polling  place, 
and  managed  the  election  as  he  and  his  indescribable  in- 
vaders desired.  As  reported,  Atchison's  election  resulted 
in  6,218  votes  cast;  5,437  for  the  pro-slavery  candidates  and 
only  791  for  the  free  State  ones.  The  Congressional  In- 
vestigating Committee  disclosed  the  whole  fraud  and  dis- 
honesty of  it  during  the  following  year,  v/hen  they  found 
that  1,410  legal  votes  were  cast,  and  4,808  illegal  ones  by 
Atchison's  invaders  from  Missouri. 

Every  one  of  the  pro-slavery  candidates  claimed  his 
election.  Governor  Reeder  had  fixed  his  residence  at  Shaw- 
nee Mission,  about  four  miles  west  of  Western  Missouri, 
the  most  central  rendezvous  of  the  invaders.  It  was  the 
seat  of  an  old  Indian  mission  not  far  below  Leavenworth 
on  the  Missouri  Eiver.  These  legislators  of  Atchison's — 
invaders  themselves,  and  sustained  by  the  general  horde — 
were  mostly  armed,  and  were  accompanied  and  protected 
by  an  armed  company  of  their  rogues  when  they  called  on 
Governor  Eeeder,  after  five  days  for  filing  contests  had  ex- 
pired, and  demanded  certificates  for  all  their  candidates  in 
the  seventeen  districts. 

In  anticipation  of  trouble,  the  governor  had  surrounded 
the  premises  with  an  armed  guard,  but  much  inferior  in 
numbers  to  the  assembled  rascals  and  legislators.  How- 
ever, he  admitted  part  of  their  force  and  all  the  demand- 
ing candidates,  making  the  party  of  rogues  in  all  about 
equal  to  the  governor's  guard.  These  two  forces  divided  the 
lower  part  of  the  house,  each  one  occupying  its  own  side; 
and  thus  the  armed  contestants  parleyed,  disputed,  and 
wrangled  for  as  much  as  two  days,  at  the  end  of  which  the 
governor  yielded.  He  issued  certificates  to  the  candidates 
of  eleven  out  of  the  seventeen  districts  which  they  claimed. 
In  six  of  the  districts  he  ordered  new  elections,  not  on  the 
ground  of  open  violation  of  the  law,  the  Missouri  invasion, 
and  the  monstrous  fraud  which  there  was  no  attempt  to 


552  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

conceal,  but  on  the  flimsy  plea  of  mutilated  records  and 
viva  voce  voting  in  place  of  ballot,  as  the  law  required. 

This  demand  and  receipt  of  certificates  of  election  under 
duress  was  a  fitting  climax  to  the  lawless  invasion  that  for 
a  time  Eussianized  one  of  the  Territories  of  the  United 
States.  In  the  six  districts  in  which  the  governor  ordered 
new  elections  five  elected  free  State  representatives,  and 
most  of  the  others  would  have  done  so  with  the  same  op- 
portunity. The  invaders  had  seized  and  secured  the  Legis- 
lature beyond  doubt,  and,  having  about  all  they  wanted, 
they  did  not  care  to  contest  the  balloting,  when,  with  much 
less  trouble,  they  could  control  the  Legislature.  The  free 
State  men  subsequently  elected  were  so  outraged  at  the  con- 
duct of  the  invaders  that  they  never  qualified  as  members 
of  Atchison's  border  Legislature. 

After  the  outrage  had  been  fully  accomplished,  Governor 
Eeeder  awoke  from  his  sense  of  believing  that  any  of  these 
ruffians  cared  anything  more  for  him  than  his  assent  to 
the  legality  of  their  organization.  He  realized,  in  a  meas- 
ure at  least,  his  inability  to  make  the  least  impression  on 
the  slavery  field-marshal,  the  string-stretcher,  the  mimic 
Calhoun,  or  any  considerable  part  of  the  invaders;  but  he 
was  still  full  of  the  belief  that  the  honorable  and  high- 
minded  men  of  the  Administration  at  Washington  would 
aid  him  in  preventing  the  consummation  of  the  outrageous 
designs  of  these  marauders,  if  no  more.  In  a  few  weeks  he 
hastened  to  the  Capital,  to  lay  the  entire  proceeding  be- 
fore them,  and  get  personal  instruction  as  to  the  best  and 
most  effective  means  of  remedying  the  evil,  and  how  to  pre- 
vent such  crimes  against  liberty  in  the  future. 

When  he  reached  Washington  he  found  to  his  astonish- 
ment that  he  was  neither  desired  nor  expected  there.  He 
saw  that  the  pro-slavery  Vice-President  was  doing  what 
was  expected  of  him,  and  that  the  whole  Administration 
was  builded  and  held  up  on  his  own  previously  expressed 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  653 

idea  and  qualification  for  office,  '"the  equality  of  horses 
and  niggers."  For  any  good  such  a  mission  as  his  could 
accomplish  he  might  as  well  have  gone  with  a  friendly  greet- 
ing and  a  petition  for  justice  from  the  Boston  tea-upsetters 
to  King  George  as  to  go  to  the  Administration  of  Jeffer- 
son Davis  and  Franklin  Pierce. 

Finding  his  pilgrimage  of  no  avail,  and  sorely  liumili- 
ated,  as  one  who  would  not  openly  denounce  such  conduct, 
he  wended  his  weary  way  back,  with  much  less  knowledge 
of  what  to  do  than  before  his  visit.  But  the  foreseeing 
Pierce  and  Davis  Administration  knew  positively  what  would 
happen  to  him.  The  weak,  disconsolate  governor  still 
halted,  but  returned.  When  he  did  return,  his  first  act  was 
to  veto  onf  of  the  first  laws  passed  by  the  invaders'  Legis- 
lature. 

Stringfellow,  of  the  Squatter  Sovereign,  whose  main  pur- 
pose was  to  unsquat  freedom  in  Kansas,  and  drive  the  free 
settlers  out  of  it,  was  delighted  in  Eeeder's  discomfiture. 
He  was  one  of  the  chief  leaders  of  the  invasion,  who,  of 
course,  easily  got  into  their  Legislature;  for  they  had  need 
of  him  and  his  paper  as  a  very  necessary  part  of  the  machin- 
ery to  carry  on  their  diabolism.  They  elected  him  speaker 
of  their  emigrated  Legislature,  when,  in  his  ecstasy,  he 
shouted  "Eureka!"  all  too  soon;  but  a  man  who  could  serve 
Atchison  at  that  time  through  such  devious  sin  could  not 
have  done  better  or  have  been  more  harmoniously  wicked. 
In  his  joy  over  this  swelling  madness  and  triumph  of  evil 
as  he  verily  believed,  he  said:  "To  have  intimated  one  year 
ago  that  such  a  result  would  have  been  wrought  out,  one 
would  have  been  thought  a  visionary.  For  me  to  have  pre- 
dicted that  to-day  a  Legislature  would  assemble,  almost 
unanimously  pro-slavery,  with  myself  for  speaker,  I  would 
have  been  thought  mad.  The  South  must  and  will  prevail 
if  the  Southern  people  but  half  do  their  duty.  In  less  than 
nine  months  from  this  day  Kansas  will  have  formed  a  Cozi- 


554  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

stitution  and  be  knocking  at  the  door  of  the  Union  for  ad- 
mission. I  predict  that  in  the  session  of  1856  two  sena- 
tors from  the  slaveholdiug  State  of  Kansas  will  take  their 
seats,  and  Abolitionism  will  be  driven  from  our  halls  of 
legislation." 

Reeder  was  sorely  grieved  and  disappointed.  He  was 
so  completely  helpless  that  he  was  not  respected;  but,  with 
all  this,  when  he  had  endured  enough  disgrace  to  have 
driven  an  inebriate  from  his  cups,  he  was  pleading  with 
and  helping  these  slavery  idolaters  in  the  worship  of  their 
Baal.  He  charged  the  responsibility  of  these  fearful  ma- 
raudings to  "the  destructive  spirit  of  Abolitionism,"  and 
begged  these  uncaught  rascals  of  the  border  to  do  better 
in  the  future,  while  they  were  mocking  his  fear  and  weak- 
ness. How  his  demands  and  reasonings  for  more  respect- 
ful observance  of  decency,  so  remote  in  their  reckonings, 
sounded  in  their  slavery-seared  minds  and  hardened  hearts 
is  best  told  in  the  language  of  Stringfellow's  Sovereign: 
"On  Tuesday  the  Governor  sent  in  his  message,  which  you 
will  find  is  very  well  calculated  to  have  its  effect  with  the 
Pennsylvania  Democracy.  If  he  were  trustworthy,  I  would 
be  disposed  to  compliment  the  most  of  it;  but,  knowing 
how  corrupt  the  author  is,  he  not  expecting  to  remain  long 
with  us,  I  pass  it  by." 

Eeeder  tried  to  be  firm.  Some  who  knew  him  said  that, 
before  his  term  and  struggle  with  these  men  was  over.  He 
believed  he  was,  but  if  so,  he  was  only  so  much  further 
deceived;  for  he  never  had  the  strength  and  virility  to  deal 
with  such  border  outlaws.  He  vetoed  the  first  bill  sent 
him  after  his  return  from  Washington,  whereupon  this  in- 
vaders' assembly,  with  no  right  to  legislate  for  anybody,  met 
in  joint  session,  and  boldly  requested  President  Pierce  to 
remove  their  governor. 

Their  messenger  on  the  way  to  Washington  with  their 
weighty  appeal  read  in  the  newspapers  that  "the  President 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  555 

had  removed  Governor  Reeder."  The  reasons  given  for  his 
removal  were  that  there  had  been  some  irregularities  in  the 
sale  of  certain  Indian  lands  under  his  control,  which  was 
no  more  than  a  silly  pretense.  If  he  had  continued  to  serve 
the  border  marshal  and  his  horde,  he  could  have  done  as 
he  wished  with  the  lands;  or,  if  he  had  aided  them  further 
and  submitted,  as  he  did  in  the  beginning,  he  would  have 
been  retained ;  but  the  time  had  arrived  when,  if  he  intended 
to  enforce  honest  and  fair  processes  of  law,  his  removal  was 
needed.  It  was  as  true,  also,  that  they  did  not  desire  any 
successor  for  awhile,  and  that  they  industriously  proceeded 
to  enact  their  whole  code  of  slavery  legislation,  with  Wood- 
son as  acting  governor. 

This  invaders'  conspiring  body,  which  was,  in  form,  a 
Legislature,  had  been  given  authoritative  existence,  not  in 
accordance  with  the  organic  law  of  the  Territory,  as  many 
have  written,  but  in  plain  defiance  of  both  its  letter  and 
spirit.  To  get  authentication  of  its  legal  existence  was 
the  only  necessity  that  led  them  to  accept  such  a  governor 
as  Eeeder.  When  that  was  done,  and  he  would  not  counte- 
nance their  flagrant  violation  of  law,  he  became  entirely 
useless  to  them.  They  wanted  him  speedily  removed,  which 
was  done;  and  they  did  not  desire  an  immediate  appoint- 
ment of  his  successor — not  for  some  weeks  at  least — which 
was  also  done.  Eeeder's  removal  took  place  July  26th.  Wil- 
son Shannon,  of  Ohio,  was  appointed  governor  September 
1st.  During  this  interval  of  thirty-six  days,  and  until  the 
arrival  of  Shannon,  Secretary  Woodson  w^as  acting  governor. 
In  this  time  this  slavery-serving  body,  actually  under  Atchi- 
son, with  every  follower  and  henchman  on  duty,  and  every 
line  of  its  dastard  work  anticipated  and  provided  for,  held 
a  high  carnival  of  shameless  and  unconcealed  usurpation. 

They  adopted  the  slave-code  of  Missouri  to  save  time 
and  work,  with  torturing  penalties  as  much  more  cruel, 
debased,   and   degraded,   as   the   slave-driver   Atchison   de- 


556  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

scended  below  Benton  in  conduct  of  public  affairs.  They 
put  in  operation  in  form  of  law  the  slave-catching  code,  as 
destitute  of  mercy  or  human  rights  as  these  brutalized 
wretches  were  ignorant  and  oblivious  of  any  better  quali- 
ties in  men.  They  enacted  a  code  of  laws  that  Satan,  in 
his  cunning  and  experience,  if  not  in  his  wisdom,  would  not 
have  done;  and,  not  content  with  this,  they  flaunted  their 
ignorance  and  cruelty  to  the  world  in  what  they  called 
a  report  of  their  Judiciary  Committee.  They  said  in  part: 
''The  question  of  slavery  is  one  that  convulses  the  whole 
country,  from  the  boisterous  Atlantic  to  the  mild  Pacific. 
This  state  of  things  has  been  brought  about  by  the  fanati- 
cism of  the  iSTorth  and  East,  while  up  to  this  time  the  people 
of  the  South  and  those  of  the  IS'orth  who  desire  the  per- 
petuation of  the  Union,  and  are  devoted  to  the  laws,  have 
been  entirely  conservative.  But  the  time  is  coming — yes, 
it  has  already  arrived — for  the  latter  to  take  a  bold  stand 
that  the  Union  and  law  may  not  be  trampled  in  the  dust." 

Slavery  had  triumphed.  In  the  interval  between  Eeeder 
and  Shannon  it  had  been  firmly  fixed  in  the  law;  and  some 
two  or  three  hundred  slaves  had  been  taken  into  the  Terri- 
tory. The  slaveholder  and  the  pro-slavery  Administration 
firmly  believed  that  it  was  all  settled. 

Of  Eeeder  little  more  need  be  said.  He  had  disappointed 
both  sides.  He  was  not  a  bad  man,  only  a  weak  one,  gone 
astray  with  the  prevailing  frailty  of  accepting  position  that 
only  a  strong,  well-grounded  man  could  take  and  fill  to 
his  own  and  the  people's  satisfaction.  If  he  had  been  such, 
there  was  a  time  when  he  could  have  dispersed  those  bor- 
der outlaws,  and  called  the  law-abiding  people  of  the  coun- 
try to  the  support  of  a  policy  that  the  pro-slavery  Adminis- 
tration would  have  been  bound  to  respect,  or  else  provoke 
a  war  at  once;  but  neither  side  was  then  ready  for  it. 

Reeder  passed  from  the  Kansas  question  on  the  side 
of  the  pro-slavery  leaders,  and  was  soon  in  the  better  work 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  557 

of  contending  for  a  free  State,  but  always  with  a  frailty. 
After  he  turned,  he  fell  to  denouncing  the  law,  and  Judge 
Douglas  for  agreeing  to  it.  This  was  the  same  law  that 
he  had  so  faithlessly  failed  to  enforce.  Caleb  Gushing,  At- 
torney-General and  general  contortionist  of  the  Jefferson 
Davis  pro-slavery  Administration,  very  unceremoniously 
disposed  of  Reeder  when  he  went  to  Washington  to  de- 
mand justice  against  the  armed  body  of  Missourians,  whom 
he  had  made,  by  his  certificates,  the  Kansas  Territorial 
Legislature.  Gushing,  addressing  him,  said:  "You  state 
that  this  Legislature  is  the  creature  of  force  and  fraud. 
Which  shall  we  believe:  your  official  certificates,  which  you 
issued  to  these  members  under  seal,  or  your  siTbsequent 
declarations  to  us  in  private?" 

Under  the  Territorial  act  the  governor  had  the  author- 
ity of  fixing  the  capital  or  seat  of  government.  Although 
Stringfellow  and  the  Missouri  body  remonstrated  earnestly, 
Eeeder  fixed  Pawnee,  a  small  settlement  of  two  or  three 
families  and  as  many  houses  adjoining  Fort  Riley,  as  the 
capital.  This  place  was  one  hundred  and  ten  miles  west 
of  the  Missouri,  on  the  Kansas  River.  This  angered  the 
Missourians,  who  had  no  disposition  to  go  so  far  into  a 
sparsely-settled  region,  one  hundred  and  twenty  miles  from 
Western  Missouri,  which  was  the  actual  seat  of  govern- 
ment, from  which  the  members  did  not  intend  to  be  more 
than  one  day's  travel  distant.  Therefore,  as  soon  as  Reeder 
was  removed,  they  moved  back  to  Shawnee  Mission,  on  the 
Missouri,  convenient  to  their  homes. 

Their  real  session  for  work  bes:an  Julv  16th,  and  con- 
tinued  to  August  30th.  It  was  so  timed  in  order  to  have 
all  their  lawmaking  done  before  the  arrival  of  the  new 
governor.  iVmong  their  first  acts  were  those  to  unseat  all 
the  free  State  members,  even  before  they  had  appeared, 
and  seat  their  own.  They  passed  a  separate  act  making  it 
a  capital  offense  to  assist  escaping  slaves  into  or  out  of 


558  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

the  Territor}^  and  a  felony  punishable  with  hard  labor  from 
two  to  five  years,  to  conceal  or  aid  escaping  slaves,  to  cir- 
culate anti-slavery  publications  or  documents,  or  to  deny 
the  right  to  hold  slaves  in  the  Territory. 

They  passed  another  statute  requiring  all  voters  to 
swear  to  support  the  Fugitive-slave  Law.  In  addition,  with 
the  names  and  titles  changed  to  suit  Territorial  conditions, 
with  their  Draconian  penalties  added,  they  adopted  the 
statutes  of  Missouri  in  a  lump  as  the  laws  of  the  Territory. 

A  certain  Judge  Lecompte  was  superserviceable  to  them. 
He  decided,  obiter  dictum,  that  the  laws  of  this  migrating 
body  of  Missourians  were  the  laws  of  the  United  States, 
that  any  one  guilty  of  violating  or  resisting  these  dragnets, 
that  would  have  delighted  Philip  the  Second,  committed  high 
treason,  and  that  on  accusation  all  such  prima  facie  criminals 
should  be  subject  to  arrest  and  trial  at  once.  The  Mis- 
sourians located  the  permanent  capital  on  the  south  side  of 
the  Kansas  Eiver,  a  few  miles  west,  and  named  this  famous 
seat  of  Missouri-propagated  law  and  iniquity  Lecompton,  in 
recognition  of  his  services.  This  memorable  name  was  sug- 
gested by  the  editor  of  the  Squatter  Sovereign,  the  mimic 
"candle-box"  Calhoun,  and  Sheriff  Jones;  but  Lecompton 
never  throve,  it  was  too  famous,  and  came  out  of  too  much 
wickedness,  and  is  as  undiscernible  as  any  one  of  the  "cities 
of  the  plain." 

These  roving  Missourians  before  adjourning  passed  a 
concurrent  resolution  declaring  "The  purpose  and  proposal 
to  organize  a  ISTational  Democratic  party,  having  already  mis- 
led some  of  our  friends,  wall,  if  it  is  further  pursued,  divide 
our  party,  and  therefore  it  is  the  duty  of  the  pro-slavery 
Union-loving  men  of  Kansas  to  know  but  the  one  issue  of 
slavery,  and  that  any  party  making  or  attempting  to  make 
any  other  should  be  held  to  be  an  ally  of  Abolitionism  and 
disunion." 

It  is  not  strange  that  this  prowling  horde,  when  assured 


THE  MEN  OF  TTTS  TIME.  559 

that  the  odious  work  of  setting  up  the  forms  of' law  to  en- 
slave the  Territory  was  complete,  having  received  no  more 
remuneration  than  would  "feed  and  fire  up"  such  men, 
turned  their  attention  to  thrifty  and  profitable  disposal  of 
franchises,  to  which  one-sixth  of  their  published  acts  were 
devoted.  They  chartered  railroad  companies,  insurance  com- 
panies, toll-bridges,  ferries,  coal-mines,  plank-roads,  and 
whatever  could  be  made  an  exclusive  use  of  public  property 
or  franchise.  They  organized  several  counties,  which,  with 
their  courts,  clerks,  tax-gatherers,  and  other  offices,  afforded 
an  office  for  every  one  among  them  who  could  read  and 
write.  The  location  for  the  State  capital  too,  that  was  to 
be,  was  ten  miles  from  any  other  town  or  village,  where 
there  was  land,  air,  and  expansion  room  enoiigh  in  their 
platted  additions  to  give  a  corner  lot  to  every  one  who 
would  take  it. 

Wilson  Shannon,  of  Ohio,  succeeded  Reeder  as  governor, 
September  1,  1855.  He  made  a  reasonable  effort  to  preserve 
the  peace  and  execute  the  laws  of  the  Territory.  He  be- 
lieved that  the  laws  enacted  by  the  migrating  Missourians 
were  binding  statutes,  and  those  under  which  the  Territory 
should  be  governed.  The  tales  of  slavery's  victory  spread  all 
over  the  countr}',  and  freedom  seemed  languishing  and  list- 
less in  the  house  of  its  friends.  The  few  faithful  friends 
it  had,  and  those  who  believed  in  a  free  State,  had  not  given 
up  the  hope  that  help  in  some  Avay  M'ould  come  to  them; 
but  so  far  their  opposition  against  border  ruffianism  had 
taken  no  practicable  form,  and  the  settlers  were  not  as  yet 
organized  for  any  counter  movement  against  slavery.  Their 
center  of  settlements  and  their  strongest  one  was  at  Law- 
rence. During  the  progress  of  the  diabolical  work  the 
people  of  the  free  States  were  being  aroused  to  the  danger 
in  many  ways.  The  news  of  the  crisis  on  the  border  and 
of  every  day's  happenings  Avas  carried  all  over  the  North 
and  the  West  almost  on  the  winijs  of  the  winds.     Thev  were 


560  ABBAHAM  LINCOLN. 

a  reading  people,  and  as  surely  as  they  enjoyed  libert}'',  so 
surely  they  resolved  to  help  their  sorely-oppressed  fellow- 
citizens  on  the  frontier  in  Kansas.  Every  untrammeled  man 
and  newspaper  in  the  free  States  sent  a  message  of  hope  and 
a  promise  of  relief  to  our  free-State  brethren. 

The  settlement  of  Kansas  was  first  made  by  those  com- 
ing under  the  help  of  the  aid  societies,  which  made  the 
nucleus  of  several  forming  settlements.  They  were  clear- 
headed, industrious,  law-abiding  people,  who  soon  realized 
what  there  was  in  the  situation,  and  in  a  devoted,  persevering 
way  set  about  making  their  homes  habitable  and  comfortable. 
Soon  after  their  arrival  in  1854,  they  opened  up  farms  along 
the  fertile  valley  of  the  Kansas  Eiver  and  several  other 
small  streams.  They  erected  hotels,  business  establishments, 
and  offices,  and  introduced  printing-presses. 

After  the  adjournment  of  the  "Bogus  Legislature,"  as 
it  was  commonly  called,  it  became  generally  known  that  all 
the  powers  of  the  slavery  propagandists  at  Washington  and 
in  the  West  were  to  be  used  to  complete  their  wretched 
work.  It  was  found  that  the  conflict  offered  by  the  invaders 
had  to  be  taken  up,  and  as  there  could  be  no  toleration  of 
any  other  issue  than  slavery,  a  divided  opposition  on  the  free 
State  side,  even  by  what  was  supposed  as  a  jSTational  Demo- 
cratic party,  could  not  exist.  The  friends  of  freedom  and 
a  free  State  decided  that  all  other  party  divisions  or  affili- 
ations should  be  abandoned,  and  that  all  should  unite  for  the 
common  good  under  the  name  of  the  Free  State  party  of 
Kansas,  and  contend  as  they  might  be  able  and  were  per- 
mitted in  their  cause.  They  knew  that  about  all  of  the 
actual  settlers  were  anti-slavery  people,  and  in  spite  of  all 
threatenings  and  obstacles  in  their  way  they  felt  confident 
of  ultimate  success.  Their  numbers  were  increasing  so  fast 
that  in  the  fall  of  1855,  by  a  careful  reckoning,  the  popula- 
tion was  estimated  at  twelve  thousand,  an  increase  of  four 
thousand  in  the  first  vear  of  settlement. 


CHAPTER  XXY. 

THE  ejected  members  of  the  Legislature,  who  had  been 
given  certificates  of  election  by  Governor  Eeeder,  met 
and  held  frequent  conferences  together,  and  in  consul- 
tation with  the  people,  as  to  the  best  course  to  pursue  from 
time  to  time  for  several  months.  Finally  after  consider- 
ation, it  was  determined  to  call  a  mass  convention,  which 
was  to  meet  at  Big  Springs,  a  few  miles  west  of  Lawrence, 
September  5,  1855,  where  a  two-days'  convention  was  held. 
The  critical  situation  of  affairs  was  considered,  and  the  best 
preparations  that  were  possible  at  the  time  were  agreed  to, 
when  organized  resistance  to  the  invasion  and  the  introduc- 
tion of  slavery  was  inaugurated. 

Ex-Governor  Eeeder,  who  had  become  an  ardent  free 
State  advocate  after  his  removal,  was  present.  He,  with 
other  members  of  a  committee,  submitted  resolutions  de- 
nouncing the  "Bogus  Legislature"  and  all  its  acts  as  usur- 
pations. They  counseled  submission  as  long  as  there  was 
hope  for  a  peaceful  settlement;  but  if  a  bloody  issue  was 
forced  upon  them  they  determined  to  resist  and  defend 
themselves  and  their  homes  at  all  hazards.  They  unsparingly 
denounced  the  Missouri  invaders,  and  protested  against  their 
acts  as  outrages.  They  nominated  Eeeder  as  their  delegate 
to  Congress,  in  place  of  Whitfield. 

They  fixed  October  9th  as  the  day  for  holding  the  elec- 
tion for  a  congressional  delegate.  The  pro-slavery  party 
offered  no  opposition;  hence  Eeeder  received  all  of  the 
2,849  votes  cast  at  the  election.  The  Convention  recom- 
mended the  organization,  arming,  and  mustering  of  several 
86  561 


562  ABBAEAM  LINCOLN. 

militia  companies,  -which  was  done  soon  afterward.  This 
was  the  first  movement  effectuall}^  made  for  resisting  Atchi- 
son's armed  invasions. 

The  Convention  resolutely  determined  to  take  no  notice 
or  cognizance  of  the  invading  Missourians  as  a  legal  Legis- 
lature; hence  at  an  election  held  October  1st,  under  the 
management  of  the  invaders,  Whitfield  received  2,721  votes, 
which  were  cast  by  the  Missourians  and  as  many  pro-slavery 
residents  as  participated,  about  three  hundred. 

At  this  Big  Springs  Convention  means  were  agreed  upon 
unanimously  for  the  selection  of  delegates,  who  were  to 
assemble  at  Topeka  for  the  purpose  of  framing  and  submit- 
ting to  the  legally-qualified  voters  a  free  State  Constitution. 
These  Conventions  and  the  voting  under  their  authority 
positively  developed  the  population  and  voting  strength  of 
the  free  State  people,  for  in  the  uncertain,  threatened  vio- 
lence and  unsettled  conditions  about  them  only  those  with 
the  courage  to  stand  by  their  convictions  were  likely  to 
participate  in  a  free  State  Convention  or  election. 

Finding  by  their  several  undertakings  that  their  popula- 
tion was  as  much  as  twelve  thousand,  and  their  voting 
strength  as  much  as  three  thousand,  and  that  they  were 
practically  unanimous  in  their  determination  to  make  the 
Territory  a  free  State,  it  was  as  good  as  settled  there  that 
it  would  take  more  Missourians  than  had  at  any  time  crossed 
the  border  in  their  marauding  invasions  to  make  it  any- 
thing else. 

These  delegates,  with  full  knowledge  of  their  responsi- 
bilities and  in  pursuance  of  their  settled  policy  to  resist 
every  invasion  of  their  Territory  and  their  rights,  and  fully 
believing  that  antagonism  to  Atchison  and  his  armed  hordes 
meant  war,  they  yet  deliberately  assembled  at  Topeka  on 
the  23d  of  October.  Here  they  calmly  proceeded  to  frame  a 
State  Constitution  for  submission  to  the  legal  voters.  In 
due  time,  after  careful  consideration  of  every  interest,  in- 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  563 

eluding  that  of  the  slaveholders  and  their  two  or  three  hun- 
dred slaves,  a  carefully-considered  and  well-prepared  funda- 
mental law  was  submitted  to  the  people,  to  be  voted  on  by 
them  on  December  15th.  The  Constitution  was  adopted 
by  an  affirmative  vote  of  1,731,  with  no  more  than  45  against, 
the  Missourians  not  voting.  The  election  came  on  the  day 
of  a  severe  winter  storm,  which,  taken  with  the  knowledge 
that  there  was  little  opposition  to  it,  accounts  for  the  smaller 
vote  than  usual  at  that  election.  Of  the  instrument  little 
objection  could  have  been  made  to  it  by  any  except  those  who 
were  attempting  to  force  slavery  upon  an  unwilling  people. 
A  reasonable  time  was  given  the  venturesome  slaveholders 
to  remove  their  slaves,  who  were  only  testing  the  forbearance 
of  the  free  State  people.  At  the  same  time  they  were  fore- 
stalling and  forcing  in  every  way  that  their  hazardous  action 
could  a  favorable  consideration  of  their  assumed  right  to 
hold  slaves  in  any  Territory  of  the  United  States,  even  before 
local  laws  establishing  slavery  had  been  passed. 

The  petition  for  admission  as  a  free  State  was  presented 
to  the  Senate  and  House  of  Eepresentatives,  March  21,  185G. 
For  this  procedure  they  had  precedent  and  good  authority, 
as  held  by  the  Attorney-General  of  the  United  States,  in  the 
admission  of  Arkansas,  "That  citizens  of  the  Territories 
possess  the  constitutional  right  to  assemble  and  petition 
Congress  for  the  redress  of  grievances;  that  the  form  of 
petition  is  immaterial;  as  the  power  of  Congress  over  the 
whole  subject  is  plenary,  they  may  accept  any  Constitution, 
however  framed,  which  in  their  judgment  meets  the  sense 
of  the  people  affected  by  it." 

Another  election  was  held  by  the  free  State  people, 
January  15,  1856,  for  the  election  of  State  officers  and  a 
Legislature  as  provided  for  in  the  Constitution,  at  which 
Charles  Eobinson,  of  Lawrence,  received  1,296  votes  out 
of  1,706  for  governor,  and  Delahay  received  1,628  votes 
for  delegate  to  Congress  without  opposition.     The  Legis- 


564  Aim  All  AM  uycoLN. 

lature,  which  was  organized  soon  after,  elected  Andrew  H. 
Keeder  and  James  II.  Lane  senators  from  the  State  on  the 
4th  of  March  following. 

In  this  way  a  Constitution  with  reasonable  protection 
in  legal  form,  with  officers,  and  provided  with  all  the  ma- 
chinery of  our  simple  republican  system,  was  made  and 
adopted  in  full  accord  with  the  "squatter  sovereignty"  prin- 
ciple under  which  the  Territory  was  called  into  existence, 
lacking  only  the  authority  of  Congress  to  make  it  a  State,  as 
invited  and  foreshadowed  by  that  same  authority  when  it 
was  opened  to  settlement.  Nevertheless,  Kansas  did  not 
seem  to  be  much  nearer  Statehood  than  when  the  contest 
began,  but  every  day  was  forging  ahead  a  stronger  power  in 
the  Nation  than  the  slave-propaganda. 

^fuch  has  been  said  of  the  cliringing  attitude  and  rela- 
tion of  ])oliticians,  public  men,  and  the  statesmen  of  that 
time.  Men  were  blinded  by  the  prejudices  and  teaching  of 
generations,  bo  that  they  were  easily  wrought  into  a  fury 
over  the  excitable  subject  of  slavery  that  had  divided  the 
people  and  the  States  from  the  beginning.  Personal  de- 
nunciations and  condemnations  were  so  common  that  before 
the  war  began  they  came  to  be  little  heeded.  The  truth  is, 
that  thousands  of  the  best  and  wisest  men  of  the  period 
were  startled,  astonished,  and  turned  away  from  the  party 
relations  of  a  lifetime.  The  fault  seemed  not  to  be  that 
they  were  changing,  for  that  was  every  man's  right  and 
privilege,  but  that  the  turn-overs  and  new  recruits  became 
too  zealous,  and  were  not  as  tolerant  of  those  who  did  not 
turn  with  them  as  they  should  have  been,  and  did  not  do  to 
others  as  they  would  have  had  others  do  unto  them. 

All  through  this  changing  drama  that  became  tragedy 
the  truth  of  Gridley's  first  statement  became  more  plain 
and  discernible,  "that  if  we  taught  fieedom  in  the  free 
States  as  zealously  as  they  taught  slavery  in  the  South  for 
two  or  three  generations,  we  would  all  be  Abolitionists." 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  565 

But  in  the  heat  of  this  furious  border  warfare  and  the  apti- 
tude of  the  free  State  people  to  learn,  the  change  was  going 
on  in  years  instead  of  generations. 

The  plan  to  make  Kansas  a  State  under  the  Topeka 
Constitution  taken  alone  would  have  been  premature  for 
several  apparent  and  sufficient  reasons,  one  of  the  most  perti- 
nent being  the  small  population  in  a  Territory  that  was 
rapidly  filling  up;  but  as  a  counter  advance  against  the 
slavery  movement  and  to  unite  the  free  State  people,  who 
were  mostly  Democrats  in  the  beginning,  it  was  a  courageous 
movement  and  defiant  necessity. 

The  House  of  Representatives  in  1856  elected  Nathaniel 
P.  Banks  as  Speaker.  The  House,  after  going  through  sev- 
eral tedious  delays  because  of  its  want  of  leaders,  neverthe- 
less got  ready,  in  the  best  way  such  a  slow-moving  body 
could,  to  uncover  the  hell  that  was  killing  men  and  burning 
out  their  liberties  along  the  Kansas-Missouri  border.  The 
doings  of  the  Convention  at  Topeka  reached  the  House  of 
Representatives  at  Washington,  where  years  before  John 
Quincy  Adams  had  triumphed  over  wooden  heads  and  the 
foes  of  the  right  of  petition.  But  the  conditions  were  now 
changed,  and  the  Banks  House  of  Representatives  was 
anxious  to  hear  what  was  going  on,  without  fear  or  favor. 
Truthful  stories  all  ran  that  there  was  a  desperate  conflict 
on  the  border.  The  House  took  up  the  question  in  its  most 
earnest  and  inquisitive  way  of  getting  at  the  truth. 

Ex-Governor  Reeder  appeared  before  them  with  his  pe- 
tition, asking  admission  and  setting  forth  the  facts  of  the 
horrible  conspiracy.  The  House  erupted  into  one  of  the 
most  furious  discussions  ever  held  in  that  body.  It  opened 
up  the  contest  in  a  way  that  was  both  vigorous  and  earnest, 
resulting  in  disputes  and  assaults  and  threatenings.  One 
assault  almost  killed  Senator  Sumner,  and  there  were  threat- 
ened like  assaults  on  other  members  of  the  House  and  Senate. 
Nevertheless  the  contest  of  freedom  against  slavery  was 


566  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

accepted  as  it  had  been  by  the  free  State  people  at  Topeka. 
An  investigating  committee  that  was  willing  to  undertake 
the  responsibility,  one  that  would  fearlessly  gather  all  the 
evidence  and  reveal  the  whole  truth  regardless  of  denunci- 
ation, intimidation,  threats,  or  blows,  was  appointed. 

Two  very  well  informed  and  inquisitive  members  of  the 
majority,  and  another,  of  the  minority,  as  competent,  but 
not  as  inquisitive,  a  friend  of  Atchison,  were  appointed. 
These  three,  Howard  of  Michigan,  Sherman  of  Ohio,  and 
Oliver  of  St.  Joseph,  Missouri,  made  up  the  committee,  who 
were  directed  to  investigate  the  furious  horror  then  in 
progress  on  the  border.  Such  they  found  it  and  reported 
it,  all  agreeing  except  Oliver,  who  knew  all  about  it  before 
going  West,  but  who  could  not  or  would  not  get  the  facts 
into  reportable  shape,  as  the  others  did  so  well  and  so 
effectively. 

The  body  became  known  as  the  Howard  Committee, 
which  went  over  the  ground  along  the  border  and  took  evi- 
dence in  all  the  counties,  both  in  Kansas  and  Missouri. 
They  were  indefatigable,  untiring,  and  unsparing  in  the 
examination  of  the  principal  actors,  who  participated  in  all 
or  part  of  it.  They  investigated  as  far  as  it  was  possible, 
and  took  the  testimony  of  as  many  impartial  witnesses  as 
they  could  find.  They  gathered  a  mass  of  sworn  and  certi- 
fied testimony  amounting  to  twelve  hundred  pages,  which 
made  a  complete  revelation  of  the  crime  and  conspiracy 
against  freedom  in  Kansas.  It  was  an  exposure  of  the 
armed  Missouri  invasions  and  usurpations  of  power,  for  the 
first  time  in  authoritative  form,  two  years  after  the  plans 
of  the  slave-leaders  had  been  in  active  operation. 

The  report  was  so  complete  and  so  full  in  detail  as  testi- 
fied to  on  both  sides,  with  such  unanswerable  proof  of  the 
extent  of  the  conspiracy,  as  to  make  it  a  public  matter  sver 
afterward.  With  all  this  mass  of  convincing  evidence  against 
the  Territorial  officers,  the  invaders,  and  their  abettors,  no 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  567 

one  of  them  was  ever  brought  to  trial,  nor  was  any  one  of 
them  up  to  that  time  relieved  or  discharged  from  office  save 
Keeder,  who  was  the  only  one  that  had  ever  made  any  at- 
tempt honestly  to  enforce  the  law. 

In  part  the  committee  reported  that,  "Every  election 
has  been  controlled,  not  by  citizens  of  the  Territory,  but  by 
citizens  of  Missouri,  and  as  a  consequence  every  officer  in  the 
Territory  from  constable  to  legislators,  except  those  ap- 
pointed by  the  President,  owe  their  positions  to  non-resident 
voters.  Xone  have  been  elected  by  the  settlers,  and  your 
committee  have  been  unable  to  find  that  any  political  power 
whatever,  however  unimportant,  has  been  exercised  by  the 
people  of  the  Territory.  The  people  of  the  Territory  have 
refrained  purposely  from  the  exercise  of  their  political  and 
civil  rights.  They  made  no  attempt  to  vote  or  hold  office, 
or  bring  suits  at  law  or  ask  recognition,  doing  so  to  preserve 
the  peace,  which  was  their  only  course,  or  provoke  a  more 
alarming  condition." 

The  peaceful  disposition  and  abstinence  of  these  people 
from  all  public  concerns  was  about  all  that  was  left  as  the 
basis  for  Mr.  Oliver's  minority  report,  which  related  that 
"There  was  no  evidence  that  any  violence  was  resorted  to  or 
force  employed  by  which  men  were  prevented  from  voting." 
This  was  true  in  so  far  that  all  the  people  realized  the  folly 
of  such  an  attempt,  and  did  not  vote  or  attempt  it. 

In  April,  1856,  several  bodies  of  armed  men  arrived  in 
Kansas  from  the  South,  variously  estimated  from  five  to 
eight  hundred.  They  were  taken  there  by  Buford  of  Ala- 
bama, Wilkes  of  Virginia,  Treadwell  of  South  Carolina, 
Titus  of  Florida,  and  Hampton  of  Kentucky.  These  were 
being  distributed  throughout  the  Territory  very  much  like 
militia,  while  the  Howard  Committee  was  present  gathering 
testimony  and  probing  the  migrations,  invasions,  and  usurp- 
ing office-holders  and  their  horrible  work  to  the  bottom. 

From  the  time  of  the  report  of  this  Howard  Committee, 


568  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

the  free  States  occupied  an  advanced  position  on  the  slavery 
question.  Before  this,  conservatism,  concession,  and  com- 
promise prevailed,  because  of  arrogated  rights  on  the  part 
of  the  slaveholders,  and  the  desire  of  the  peacefully-inclined 
people  of  the  free  States  to  avoid  the  horrors  of  civil  or 
internecine  war.  The  revelations  of  the  committee  unques- 
tionably proved,  if  they  proved  anything,  that  the  slave- 
propaganda,  which  fully  controlled  Pierce's  Administration, 
was  fully  determined  to  force  slavery  into  Kansas,  right  or 
wrong,  law  or  no  law,  and  by  force  of  arms  if  necessary. 
The  work  was  actually  in  progress  at  the  time,  and  the  armed 
invasion,  pillaging,  marauding,  and  driving  men  from  their 
homes  was  planned  and  plotted  at  Washington. 

It  is  one  of  the  certainties  of  history  that  the  right  of 
self-government  and  the  progress  in  the  world's  long  con- 
tention, and  unnumbered  conflicts  for  the  rights  of  men 
have  been  very  slow,  on  our  continent  as  well  as  everywhere 
else.  The  Colonists  bore  the  exactions  and  oppressions  of 
Great  Britain  for  more  than  a  century.  Up  to  1850  our 
people  pleaded  and  dallied  and  compromised  with  the  slave- 
holders, in  the  vain  hope  that  in  time  friendly  treatment 
and  reasonable  protection  would  result  in  peaceful  emanci- 
pation. 

Notwithstanding  this  well-understood  leniency  and  the 
peacefvil  desires  of  our  people,  it  is  as  certain  as  it  is  slow, 
that  any  measure  taken  up,  believed  in,  demonstrated  to  be 
right  and  just,  without  considering  what  delays  and  beset- 
ments  it  may  encounter,  will  ultimately  prevail,  and  the 
enforcement  will  be  generally  as  strong  and  powerful  as  the 
hindrances  and  opposition  have  made  it  necessary  to  de- 
velop it.  Patriots  and  all  friends  of  human  liberty  should  be 
patient,  long-suffering,  and  persevering,  for  the  greed  and 
avarice  of  men  as  it  is  revealed  and  measured  in  all  history, 
will  be  strong  and  powerful  yet  for  centuries. 

Society  is  so  constituted  that  with  the  best  purposes,  the 


TEE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  569 

most  capable  leadership,  and  the  strongest  combinations  of 
men  in  behalf  of  right  and  justice,  only  one  of  the  crushing 
human  burdens  can  be  lifted  off  at  a  time,  and  there  are 
many  of  them  left  to  be  unloaded.  We  may  judge  of  the 
progress  of  mankind,  as  we  know  that  away  back  in  the  dim 
and  misty  eras  of  ihe  past  liberty  began  with  legions  of 
wrongs  to  contend  against,  with  men  so  low  that  it  was  often 
a  reform  to  enslave  them. 

It  is  now  nineteen  centuries  since  the  gospel  of  peace 
and  equal  manhood  were  authoritatively  given  to  man,  and 
still  to-day  the  beautiful  gospel  of  the  Master  is  no  more  to 
most  men  than  a  system  to  be  denounced  as  socialism,  or  a 
dangerous  belief  of  some  kind.  It  is  so  construed  and  inter- 
preted by  various  monarchs  of  the  earth,  and  their  worst 
hypocritical  followers  who  rob  men  of  their  rights  under 
the  name  of  free  government. 

After  the  Topeka  meeting,  there  was  war  against  slavery 
in  Kansas  in  rebuttal,  as  there  had  been  war  levied  and 
carried  on  for  several  months  by  armed  invaders  to  take  it 
there.  These  men  who  were  there  to  carry  on  this  defense 
of  freedom  were  Christians,  as  the  heroes  who  founded  the 
Nation  were.  They  were  there  to  fight  and  serve  and  suffer 
in  the  midnight  vigil,  the  water-soaked  camp,  the  gathering 
for  war,  the  weary  watch  and  march. 

Not  for  money,  not  surely  for  office,  not  for  distinction 
were  they  suffering  and  serving  in  the  great  cause,  for  few 
of  them  were  known  out  of  their  neighborhoods.  Not  one 
in  a  thousand  of  these  brave  and  patriotic  men  ever  expected 
better  reward  than  the  approval  of  his  own  conscience.  They 
were  in  the  contest  for  the  rights  of  their  fellow-men — the 
black  men  first,  because  they  were  firmest  held  under  the 
foot  of  the  oppressor,  and  then  for  their  fellow-men  of  their 
own  race. 

Those  who  contend  for  wealth  and  power  and  franchise 
seldom  stand  in  the  ranks  and  fight.     They  reckon  their 


570  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

lives  too  valuable.  The  kingly  and  commercial  usurpers 
who  wage  war  or  use  extortion  in  any  form  against  weaker 
people,  as  the  slaveholders  did,  always  do  so  for  the  wealth, 
the  spoils,  the  plunder,  the  monopolies,  or  the  commerce 
won  by  the  blood  and  the  sacrifice  of  the  men  who  fight  for 
the  rights  and  liberties  of  mankind.  They  hold  on  in  their 
oppression  until  they  provoke  revolt  or  revolution,  which 
sometimes  brings  another  overturning  on  the  road  to  true 
democracy.  Is  this  struggle  for  the  rights  of  men  all 
socialism,  or  was  Cain  right  and  not  his  "brother's  keeper?" 

As  another  measure  in  the  conduct  of  the  struggle,  the 
Topeka  movement  being  very  much  in  the  way,  the  Pierce- 
Jefferson  Davis  Administration  promulgated  an  order  of 
the  President,  not  to  disperse  or  drive  back  the  invaders, 
but  to  disperse  the  assemblages  of  the  citizens  under  the 
Topeka  plan  for  a  free  State.  This  proclamation  of  the 
President  was  issued,  commanding  "All  persons  engaged  in 
unlawful  combinations  against  the  constituted  authorities 
of  the  Territory  of  Kansas  or  of  the  United  States  to  dis- 
perse at  once."  With  this  authority,  all  that  he  desired, 
the  light-headed,  narrow-visioned  Judge  Lecompte  held  that 
the  invaders'  Legislature  was  the  creature  of  congressional 
law;  that  the  Legislature  being  an  instrument  of  Congress, 
their  laws  were  of  United  States  authority;  therefore  all 
persons  violating  these  laws  were  liable  to  arrest,  and  should 
be  indicted  for  high  treason.  He  continued:  "Even  if  re- 
sistance had  not  been  made,  the  combination  for  it  had  been 
organized,  then  it  would  be  your  duty  to  find  bills  for 
constructive  treason,  as  the  courts  have  decided  that  the 
blow  need  not  be  struck,  but  only  the  intention  made  evi- 
dent." 

With  this  prevailing  pro-slavery  madness  and  a  drastic 
code  that  would  have  found  a  man  guilty  who  was  carrying 
the  Declaration  of  Independence  or  the  New  Testament,  this 
petty  tyrant  issued  writs  for  the  arrest  of   hundreds   of 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  571 

peaceful,  non-disturbing  citizens.  One  Jones,  postmaster 
of  Weston,  Missouri,  the  seat  of  the  invaders  and  their  con- 
spiring den  under  Atchison,  came  over  and  was  made  sheriff 
of  Douglas  County,  in  which  the  settlement  of  Lawrence 
was  situated. 

Before  he  was  postmaster  he  had  been  "Just  a  common 
bully''  in  the  frontier  towns,  where  so  many  wild  and  badly- 
behaved  men  were  in  the  crowds  rushing  across  the  plains. 
In  such  places  a  man  that  could  "make  believe  and  appear 
dangerous"  was  a  necessity,  and  Jones  was  their  man.  By 
the  time  of  the  border  war  the  emigration  across  the  country 
had  slackened,  and  the  slave-leaders  having  urgent  need  for 
a  coarse,  blustering  fellow  who  covild  carry  on  usurpation 
on  the  Chinese  plan,  being  nearly  all  noise  and  demonstra- 
tion, Jones  was  their  man. 

They  filled  his  pockets  with  writs,  indictments,  and  bills 
of  Lecompte's  rump  courts  against  hundreds  of  inoffensive 
citizens  for  actual  treason  and  misprision  of  treason,  treason 
before  the  fact  and  after  the  fact,  which  Jones  neither  com- 
prehended nor  understood.  He  did  not  need  to  understand 
it,  so  long  as  he  got  the  victims'  names,  and  could  intimidate 
them  in  every  way  possible,  and  drive  them  out  of  the 
Territory.  His  task  was  to  terrorize  all  he  could,  and  arrest 
all  that  could  be  held  in  custody,  thus  making  enormous  fees 
and  subsistence  charges  against  the  United  States.  Besides 
this,  they  carried  on  the  most  wanton  and  malicious  prose- 
cution of  the  leading  citizens  of  the  Territory,  with  no  other 
offense  than  claiming  their  right  under  all  law,  even  this 
infamous  code  of  the  invaders,  to  make  it  a  free  State. 

Before  any  writs  were  issued,  Eobinson,  the  free  State 
governor-elect,  was  followed  on  his  way  east,  and  arrested 
at  Lexington,  Missouri,  where  every  preparation  for  his 
arrest  had  been  anticipated,  including  the  assent  of  the 
governor  of  Missouri.  Robinson  was  held  under  military 
arrest  four  months,  without  other  charge  than  the  indictable 


572  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

offense  of  having  participated  in  the  organization  of  a  State 
Government  under  the  Topeka  Constitution. 

James  H.  Lane,  Ex-Governor  Reeder,  and  several  hun- 
dred others  were  indicted,  and  a  great  many  of  them  were 
arrested  and  held  in  confinement  for  various  terms  and  in 
sundry  places.  Xone  were  tried.  Xo  such  action  was  in- 
tended. The  free  State  men  were  ready  for  trial  any  day. 
There  would  have  been  no  lack  of  defense.  Lincoln,  Seward, 
Chase,  and  several  others,  who  offered,  were  anxious  to  take 
up  the  defense.  The  Attorney-General  at  Washington  was 
notified  of  this,  when  very  suddenly  the  prisoners  were  all 
released,  and  poor  Jones  was  censured  for  unnecessary  ac- 
tivity.   It  was  only  a  "scare-you-out"  sort  of  business. 

Lane  received  timely  notice  that  they  were  on  his  trail 
with  a  writ.  He  was  not  ready  for  a  conflict  with  them.  He 
had  a  strong  head,  a  stiff'  neck,  and  the  grit  to  fight  when 
he  got  ready;  but  he  was  not  going  to  be  taken  at  a  dis- 
advantage. He  did  n't  want  to  waste  valuable  time  in  idle 
confinement,  so  he  got  north  through  Iowa  rapidly,  went 
to  work,  and  worked  all  the  way  with  indomitable  will,  and 
with  substantial  help  from  friends  of  freedom  all  over  the 
country.  He  was  soon  enabled  to  send  hundreds  of  well- 
equipped  young  emigrants  on  his  established  route  to  Kan- 
sas. Part  of  their  outfit  was  a  Sharp's  rifle,  a  breech-load- 
ing, repeating,  Yankee  invention,  worked  out  in  a  gun  of 
the  longest  range  and  highest-killing  capacity  of  any  weapon 
of  the  kind  then  in  use. 

These  same  Sharp's  rifles,  it  should  be  noted,  created 
more  respect  for  an  Abolitionist  and  the  free  State  men  all 
around,  whether  they  were  Democrats,  Old-lino  Whigs,  or 
of  no  party,  than  all  the  peace  meetings  ever  held  by  any 
of  Pierce's  and  Davis's  governors.  One  hundred  of  these 
"repeating  guns,"  in  the  hands  of  one  of  "Jim  Lane's  com- 
panies," made  a  peaceful  zone  twenty  miles  around  in  every 
direction. 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  573 

These  brave  citizens  had  nothing  at  the  start  but  their 
bare  hands,  resolute  hearts,  and  a  just  cause.  They  began 
with  twos  and  threes,  and  then  perhaps  with  a  dozen;  and 
in  time  the  Topeka  movement  came;  but  it  was  no  more 
than  a  peaceful  assembling  that  could  call  out  and  prepare 
for  organizing  courts  and  militia  forces  in  the  future.  They 
were  so  weak  in  their  beginnings  that  their  first  movements 
invited  the  persecutions  of  the  previously  armed  mobs  and 
blustering  cowards.  Although  it  was  a  w^eak  movement  in 
its  inception,  it  did  that  which  it  was  intended  to  do — it 
aroused  those  who  had  the  strength  and  knew  well  how  to 
use  it. 

The  freedom-believing  people  of  that  day,  all  over  our 
country,  outside  the  power  of  the  slaveocracy,  were  not  cor- 
rupted with  any  form  of  obnoxious  wealth  or  power,  or  an 
aristocracy  of  any  kind;  hence  when  they  came  to  know 
that  their  brethren  in  Kansas  were  in  distress  and  peril, 
relief  of  the  kind  needed  poured  into  the  Territory  in  such 
abundance  that  ever  after  the  report  of  the  Howard  Com- 
mittee the  free  State  men  always  had  the  means  at  hand  to 
defeat  the  slave  power  under  Atchison,  with  all  his  support 
at  Washington. 

The  free  State  people  did  not  develop,  or  have  one  man 
among  them  who  had  all  the  many  needed  qualities  of  pa- 
tience, devotion  and  caution,  courage,  determination,  and 
the  high  military  capacity  to  be  a  civil  and  military  leader 
in  himself.  It  was  not  then,  nor  so  far  now,  an  ordinary 
event  to  find  one  in  an  emergency,  having  all  these  qualities 
of  high  leadership;  but  they  had  two  or  three  hundred  of 
the  brighest  young  men  in  the  land,  with,  talents  and  in- 
dustry, education  and  character,  that  honored  them  as  they 
would  have  done  any  people.  Out  of  these  there  were  three 
men  in  the  Kansas-Missouri  border  war,  with  widely-differ- 
ing character  and  capacities,  who  were  nevertheless  able, 
conspicuous,  fearless,  and  capable  leaders  in  that  desperate 


574  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

strife.  Either  one  of  them,  with  a  force  equal  in  number 
to  Atchison's  command  and  the  sustaining  power  of  the 
slave  aristocracy  at  Washington,  could  easily,  in  any  mili- 
tary undertaking,  have  driven  out  the  invaders  or  destroyed 
them  in  a  conflict  of  short  duration. 

Of  these,  there  was  Governor  Eobinson,  who  was  mild 
in  disposition,  cautious  and  learned,  a  prudent  and  discreet 
leader  under  all  conditions,  with  spirit  and  strong  character 
which  rose  above  senseless  brutal  provocations,  a  man  who 
could  govern  himself,  who,  with  Atchison's  opportunities, 
could  have  maintained  his  leadership  and  remained  a  sena- 
tor, for  his  lifetime  probably,  had  the  honor  come,  as  it  did 
to  Atchison. 

There  was  "Jim  Lane,"  whom  to  describe  here  as  he 
should  be  described,  can  not  be  attempted.  There  were 
many  bright  and  talented  men  who  knew  him  well,  yet  no 
one  of  them  has  ever  been  able  to  reveal  his  true  character 
in  a  short  sketch.  He  was  a  man  who  was  not  all  bad,  nor 
was  he  by  any  means  all  good;  but  for  the  niche  he  filled 
in  the  border  war  he  was  built  up  and  put  together  with  as 
much  harmony  and  appropriateness  as  a  well-molded  ship 
is  for  the  sea.  He  had  the  brawny  strength,  the  strong 
limbs,  the  swelling  chest,  the  bronzed  and  wind-swept  face, 
the  toughened  muscles  and  sinews,  that  no  one  in  the  work 
he  was  in  and  had  in  hand  from  day  to  day  could  get  along 
without. 

He  was  keen-witted,  crafty,  and  had  the  cunning  of  a 
fox.  He  could  fight,  and  had  no  personal  fear  about  it.  He 
could  often  do  better  than  make  a  direct  assault,  for  he 
knew  well  how  to  annoy,  harass,  surprise,  and  disturb  his 
enemy,  and  his  fights  were  usually  brought  on  in  the  least- 
expected  maneuver.  He  could  run  away  to  entice  his  enemy 
to  disadvantage.  In  all,  he  could  more  effectively  carry  on 
the  border  war  than  any  other  man  in  the  work  on  either 
side.     He  was  the  man  who  conducted  it  in  such  venture- 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  575 

some,  plunging  campaigns,  and  desultory  attacks,  that  the 
enemy  would  never  meet  him.  Pie  was  anxious  to  drive  out 
every  invader,  and  in  all  probability  could  have  done  so 
in  a  few  weeks;  but  the  prudent  Robinson  and  some  others 
held  him  back.  Such  a  course  would  probably  have  doubled 
the  invasion  under  orders  of  the  regime  at  Washington,  or 
have  created  an  opportunity  to  use  the  army  with  all  its 
force  to  repel  every  free  State  man  from  Kansas. 

Hence  the  prudent  plan  required  Lane,  as  well  as  all 
the  rest  of  them,  to  remain  in  as  peaceful  possession  of  their 
homes  as  possible,  and  do  no  more  than  carry  on  a  defensive 
war.  Lane  was  a  Marshal  Soult  sort  of  a  man,  whose  history 
is  valuable  as  an  example  to  the  inquiring  men  of  to-day, 
principally  because  of  the  actual  work  he  did  in  driving  the 
invaders  out,  and  making  Kansas  a  free  State.  He  was  not 
a  great  man,  measured  according  to  the  height  and  pro- 
portions of  the  men  with  Avhom  he  served  at  home  and  at 
Washington ;  but  for  a  man  that  could  cope  with  the  riotous 
and  ruffian-like  enemies,  who  were  bullying  and  forcing 
slavery  into  the  Territory,  he  was  a  man  above  all  others 
on  the  border  to  rely  upon,  and  a  match  for  two  like  Atchi- 
son any  day. 

There  was  John  Brown  of  Ossawatomie,  of  such  skill, 
talent,  and  unflinching  character  that  he  held  his  own  in 
one  day's  battle  with  thirty  against  five  hundred.  His  ca- 
pacity for  the  desperate  war  of  the  border  made  him  a  chief- 
tain, whatever  his  command  might  be.  Like  all  of  them 
engaged  in  the  border  work,  whether  fighting,  marauding, 
or  defending,  their  forces  were  usually  small  like  his,  run- 
ning from  twenty  to  one  hundred,  seldom  more.  He  was 
a  man  devoutly  inclined,  reverential,  fearing  God  as  became 
him  and  his  ancestry  for  generations.  He  met  the  emer- 
gencies of  war  with  courage  and  complacency,  so  that  when 
he  felt  it  to  be  his  duty,  he  even  delighted  in  persecution 
and  martyrdom. 


576  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

His  ancestry  was  Puritan.  They  came  over  in  the  May- 
flower. They  were  not  of  the  hesitating,  doubtful  kind  of 
men.  He  was  born  in  Connecticut  about  1800.  Before  the 
war  for  the  Union  he  had  brought  up  a  dutiful  family.  Four 
of  his  sons  and  their  families  migrated  to  Kansas  in  1854, 
seeking  homes,  where  they  were  peaceful,  industrious  citi- 
zens. Brown's  anti-slavery  ideas  came  honestly  and  legiti- 
mately, not  by  any  kind  of  unusual  happening,  but  as  the 
result  of  his  training  and  education.  He  grew  and  developed 
to  manhood  in  the  school  of  Gerrit  Smith  and  William  Lloyd 
Garrison.  He  was  a  Charles  Sumner  sort  of  a  man,  who, 
while  not  believing  in  blows  as  a  means  of  settlement,  yet 
who  never  deserted  his  cause,  and  who,  whether  with  argu- 
ment or  blows,  brought  his  antagonist  down  with  him  when- 
ever he  could. 

In  their  Kansas  settlements  his  sons  were  harassed, 
plundered,  and  driven  from  their  homes  by  the  Missouri 
invaders.  He  went  to  their  relief,  as  he  believed  to  be  right, 
and  as  a  father  should.  He  took  arms  and  ammunition. 
His  standing  as  a  leader  and  defender  of  homes  amon? 
those  beleaguered  free  State  people  is  best  avouched  and 
disclosed  in  the  unsparing  denunciation  he  lived  under,  the 
plundering,  pillaging,  and  murderous  warfare  carried  on 
against  his  people.  They  drove  his  sons  from  their  homes, 
and  plundered  them  of  whatever  could  be  taken  away,  and 
sought  for  months  to  kill  all  of  them,  and  did  succeed  in 
killing  one. 

They  sought  to  kill  him  and  his  family.  He  was  a  Wal- 
lace of  Ellerslie  in  their  path,  and  the  bloody  slave-masters 
wanted  his  life.  He  was  hunted  as  a  beast;  but  when  he 
turned  on  them  they  fled,  for  they  did  not  desire  a  fair 
encounter.  He  became  over-confident.  He  was  exasperated, 
but  did  not  lose  his  reason.  Like  Lane  in  part,  he  was  too 
daring,  and  never  a  fully-equipped  leader,  but  one  that  did 
great  and  effectual  service  in  the  strife  so  long  as  he  was 


TEE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  577 

under  ilio  prudent  counsel  of  Robinson.  Of  ali  of  those 
sorely-pressed  people,  Eobinson  possessed  the  most  perfect 
fitness  for  a  leader.  When  Brown  was  hunted  down  like  a 
wild  animal,  and  his  children  were  driven  from  their  homes, 
plundered,  and  slain,  by  some  unknown  movement  he  was 
separated  from  Eobinson.  Being  too  independent  for  any 
other  man's  control,  he  finally  turned  on  his  pursuers,  and 
struck  a  blow  that  shattered  their  rotten  system  of  slavery 
to  the  center. 

He  lost  his  life  as  he  expected,  in  the  contingencies  that 
he  foresaw  might  happen  in  his  raid  into  Virginia.  In  his 
sacrifice  the  war  for  and  against  slavery  began.  He  had 
been  engaged  in  the  strife  two  years,  and  he  gave  and  took 
blows  as  men  do  in  conflict.  He  neither  shrunk  nor  avoided 
the  consequences  of  his  perilous  acts.  He  took  up  the 
gauntlet  of  war  hurled  upon  him  in  a  peaceful  home,  and 
was  in  the  desperate  wager  of  battle  henceforward  for  the 
rights  of  men,  under  the  heroic  legend,  that  "resistance  to 
trj'ants  is  obedience  to  God."  The  outraged  people  of  the 
free  States  were  so  far  misled  that  they  offered  unceasing 
apologies  for  him.  Political  parties  denied  affiliation  with 
him.  Wounded  and  dying,  the  old  man  was  left  almost 
alone;  but  dragged  down  and  humiliated  by  an  ignominious 
death,  he  walked  face  to  face,  unshaken  and  happy,  to  the 
presence  of  the  great  Jehovah. 

He  was  tried  in  a  little  court  in  Virginia,  where  men, 
women,  and  children,  not  only  black,  but  three-quarters 
white,  were  raised,  and  sold  South  like  cattle.  Not  one  of 
his  captors,  prosecutors,  or  executioners  went  with  him  into 
the  shining  court,  and  not  one  of  them  could  have  done  so 
with  half  the  courage,  calmness,  and  composure  that  he  did. 
The  verdict  of  this  last  court  had  no  terrors  for  the  over- 
wrought enthusiast,  but  it  did  have  for  the  sin-cursed  Na- 
tion, and  the  people  stood  appalled.  This  old  man  and 
his  dozen  followers,  with  no  other  weapons  than  iron  pikes, 
87 


578  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

knocked  a  hole  into  tlie  man-cursed  prison,  and  brought 
down  its  tumbling  ruins  all  about  him.  Although  he  went 
down  himself,  it  was  only  before  the  whole  power  of  the 
State  of  Virginia  and  its  governor  and  the  President  of  the 
United  States  and  the  army,  the  navy,  and  the  marine  corps ; 
but  his  sacrifice  crippled  the  cruel  system. 

From  this  time  the  slave-leaders  realized  as  fully  as  they 
ever  did  that  slavery  henceforward  could  exist  only  by  force 
of  arms.  Brown  had  torn  open  the  barricade  that  hid  their 
system,  its  weakness  and  its  desperation.  They  had  brought 
their  weapons  for  his  destruction,  enlarged  the  war  of  the 
border  counties  of  Kansas  and  Missouri;  and  in  taking  up 
the  sword  for  their  inhuman  system,  and  in  their  heartless 
execution  of  one  whose  son  the}'^  had  slain,  they  invited  the 
ruin  and  destruction  that  came. 

This  is  no  apology  for  Brown  of  Ossawatomie.  He  asked 
none  for  himself,  and  as  the  tragic  events  were  beyond  and 
above  all  human  knowledge  or  control,  our  little  ideas  are 
as  nothing  in  the  great  movements  of  the  world.  In  this 
Ossawatomie  man's  life  there  was  a  startling  page  for 
humanity.  The  slaveholders  in  their  madness  ventured  war. 
This  enthusiast  of  pikes  was  their  first  conspicuous  victim, 
but  he  went  down  a  hero.  His  death  threw  a  blazing  light 
into  the  dark  pit  of  this  execrable  slavery  that  nothing  but 
human  sacrifice  could  have  done,  and  it  startled  the  Nation 
with  its  chamber  of  horrors. 

Brown  violated  the  laws  of  Virginia.  He  was  found 
guilty  before  their  courts  and  under  their  indictments.  His 
trial  was  as  fair  and  impartial  as  could  be  under  their  code. 
He  was  protected  from  the  violence  of  the  mob.  He  ac- 
knowledged his  acts,  and  so  far  stood  his  own  accuser.  He 
understood  the  consequence,  and  though  others  did  for  him, 
he  neither  asked  nor  expected  mercy.  He  was  pronounced 
guilty,  and,  without  complaining,  died  on  the  scaffold,  the 
mockery  of  mankind. 


THE  MEN  OF  1118  TIME.  579 

Slaverj'^  was  a  system  so  altogether  bad  that,  in  the  pres- 
ence of  this  war  of  pikes,  its  thousands  of  beneficiaries  stood 
shivering;  and  yet  this  assault  was  so  feeble  that  a  squad 
of  policemen  could  have  suppressed  it.  In  their  fear  they 
realized  that  it  could  continue  to  exist  only  by  forcing  its 
oppressed  victims,  the  half-ruined  and  constantly-degraded 
people  of  the  South,  into  war  to  sustain  it.  There  is  no 
doubt  now  that  their  leaders,  who  were  wiser  than  the 
children  of  light,  knew  for  years  before  it  came  that  they 
would  need  to  sustain  it  in  war.  They  planned  for  it  more 
earnestly  and  vigorously  for  a  generation,  with  more  zeal 
and  attention  than  they  gave  to  any  other  civil,  military,  or 
industrial  institution. 

Nimmo  Browne  told  Judge  Douglas  in  1845  that  the  war 
with  Mexico  was  carried  on  mostly  for  the  extension  of 
slavery,  and  that  the  same  men,  their  followers,  the  slavery- 
making  spirit,  in  their  slave  propagandism  would  turn  that 
same  power  of  arms  against  any  opposition  to  its  protection, 
existence,  or  extension  into  our  own  or  any  other  nation's 
territory.  His  words  proved  all  too  true,  and  in  1854-56 
war  was  levied  against  the  free  State  people  of  Kansas,  of 
whom  the  noted  victim  and  his  sons  were  peaceful  and  law- 
abiding  members. 

However  the  predictions  might  have  varied,  the  actual 
horror,  the  war  for  a  slave  territory,  the  dreaded  curse  of 
mankind,  was  inaugurated.  This  w^as  not  done  by  the 
settlers,  the  squatter  sovereigns,  the  poor  men  with  their 
families  building  up  their  homes.  It  is  true  that  many  of 
them  had  arms  as  they  traveled  westward.  It  was  their 
common  custom,  and  these  were  carried  for  their  protection 
and  to  get  a  share  of  the  little  game  left  by  the  Indians. 
However,  almost  without  exception,  men  settling  in  a  new 
country  with  their  wives  and  little  ones  around  them,  are 
inclined  to  plows,  hammers,  and  field  machinery,  instead 
of  guns,  and  are  much  more  happy  when  caring  for  their 


680  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

flocks  and  herds  than  in  thinking  of  marauding  campaigns. 
These  home-building  people  never  provoke  hostilities,  and 
shun  war  as  they  do  pestilence;  hence  it  appears  as  clear  as 
the  light  of  day  that  these  free  State  settlers  did  not  begin 
or  contemplate  war.  As  war  was  levied  and  carried  on 
against  these  people,  and  as  their  inclinations  were  all  on 
the  side  of  peace,  it  is  a  pertinent  question,  who  did  levy 
this  deadly  war? 

The  Howard  Committee  uncovered  the  plot  and  scheme, 
and  gave  the  facts  from  the  beginning  through  its  bloody 
progress  up  to  the  time  of  their  investigation.  By  this  evi- 
dence it  was  shown  that  as  many  as  five  thousand  ruffians 
held  and  armed  and  fed  along  the  Missouri  border,  was  the 
force  used,  and  they  were  the  dastardly  perpetrators  of  the 
wicked  crime.  Stringfellow,  Woodson,  Lecompte,  Calhoun, 
Jones  and  Buford,  Titus,  and  others,  were  the  smaller  lead- 
ers, all  under  absolute  control  of  Atchison,  senator  from 
Missouri,  acting  Vice-President.  Thus  traced  to  its  proper 
source,  it  was  the  work  of  the  slave-power  of  Calhoun,  Jef- 
ferson Davis,  and  their  associates,  working  through  and 
having  control  of  President  Pierce's  Administration  and  the 
co-ordinate  powers  of  the  Government,  except  the  House  of 
Eepresentatives  and  the  loyal  old  general  of  the  army, 
Winfield  Scott,  with  part  of  our  small  army. 

This  was  in  form  the  real  situation,  that  to  extend  slavery 
into  Kansas,  the  United  States  Government,  under  control 
of  the  slave-power,  had  levied  war  against  its  own  citizens, 
including  all  who  were  opposed  to  this  extension  of  slavery. 
The  Browns  of  Ossawatomie  were  a  part  of  these  outraged 
people,  and  the  father,  the  man  of  pikes,  fought  back  and 
tackled  the  monster  evil  in  its  den,  in  one  of  its  most  re- 
spectable habitations. 

Brown  took  the  movement  as  war,  which,  according  to  its 
history,  he  properly  judged  it  to  be.  His  people  had  been 
robbed  and  killed  and  driven  from  their  homes,  where  there 


THE  MEN  OF  HIS  TIME.  581 

was  no  hand  to  save,  all  in  the  name  of  the  Republic  and  all 
under  the  direction  of  its  Vice-President  on  the  border,  and 
its  President  and  Cabinet  at  Washington.  Infatuated  with 
his  victories,  and  without  the  calm  and  prudent  control  of 
Robinson  or  the  masterly  work  and  details  of  Lane,  he 
plunged  into  the  vitals  of  the  evil  system  that  would  govern 
the  Nation  or  compass  the  ruin  of  its  liberties,  and  perished. 

In  all  fair  and  modern  rules  or  under  cartels  in  war,  this 
old  man,  exasperated  and  fighting  back  as  he  had  done,  be- 
cause he  and  his  people  were  first  assaulted,  should  have 
been  held  a  prisoner  of  war,  subject  to  exchange.  He  and 
his  men  were  as  much  prisoners  of  war,  or  more  so,  than 
the  ruffians  caught  on  the  border,  who  were  always  treated 
well  and  exchanged  or  released.  But  this  man  of  pikes  had 
his  mission.  It  was  not  to  be  finished  until  he  stood  face 
to  face  in  the  presence  of  his  Maker.  He  stood  his  trial  and 
persecution  without  complaint,  and  his  torture  and  his  pass- 
ing well.    He  stood  in  the  awful  Presence,  how  we  know  not. 

What  of  his  accusers  and  his  executioners,  and  what  were 
they  doing?  They  were  still  levying  war  and  plotting  their 
country's  ruin.  During  all  this,  the  press,  the  rostrum, 
halls  and  courts  and  pulpits,  were  full  of  loyal  and  anti- 
slavery  people,  so  professed,  who  disclaimed  any  sympathy 
or  affiliation  with  those  who  had  made  the  invasion  into 
Virginia.  They  attributed  it  to  the  desperation  or  madness 
of  the  man,  for  which  there  was  ample  reason.  They  were 
busy  trying  to  make  up  plausible  excuses  that  Brown  utterly 
rejected.  They  were  trying  to  apologize  for  a  few  killed  in 
the  opening  slavery  war  in  Virginia,  entirely  overlooking 
the  hundreds  slain  by  the  slave-power  in  the  cold-blooded, 
villainous  war  of  the  border,  for  which  no  one  was  ever 
arrested. 

The  Nation  slowly  awoke,  stood  amazed,  appalled.  The 
man  of  pikes  was  a  martyr.  If  he  had  invaded  a  State  and 
committed  violence,  it  was  in  war,  and  there  were  a  full 


582  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN. 

thousand  of  such  violaters  of  law  who  were  then  enjoying 
the  favor  and  promotion  of  the  Government,  from  a  A^ice- 
President  down  to  Sheriff  Jones  and  the  lesser  Calhoun. 
The  thoughtful,  great-hearted  people  of  the  Eepublic 
realized  their  negligence.  In  the  sacrifice  God  called  the 
Nation  to  repentance,  and  afterwards  in  bitter  sorrow,  with 
its  wasted  millions  and  buried  heroes  in  every  churchyard, 
it  endured  his  penalties  for  as  wicked  a  system  as  ever 
cursed  the  people  of  any  nation.  John  Brown  of  Ossa- 
watomie  took  his  cause  before  the  court  of  Jehovah ;  whereas, 
on  earth,  there  were  none  to  defend,  in  that  high  Court  of 
heaven  there  were  none  to  accuse  him. 


END  OF  VOLUME  I. 


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